Arizona-based digital supply chain firm Blue Yonder is using Microsoft’s Azure platform to help UK retail chain Marks & Spencer (M&S) digitally transform.

With consumer demand and shopping preferences changing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, retailers need a more strategic approach to forecasting and fulfilment. That’s why M&S has been working with Blue Yonder, a specialist in digital supply chain and omnichannel commerce fulfilment, as part of its plans to reduce costs and improve stock flow by re-engineering its end-to-end supply chain.

Blue Yonder has completed implementation of its demand and fulfilment capabilities through Luminate Planning so M&S can quickly pivot to consumers’ rapidly changing shopping patterns to address demand, particularly across online channels.

Blue Yonder’s Luminate Planning, a cloud-based portfolio built on Microsoft Azure, provides M&S with a more accurate view into demand by consolidating and synchronising demand signals, as well as external variables across the retailers’ 1000 stores.

M&S can evaluate demand scenarios and use prescriptive recommendations to make more accurate decisions, from staging the right inventory through the distribution network to reducing stock-outs and increasing inventory turns.

Implementing Blue Yonder’s technology is seen as an important early step in M&S’s supply chain modernisation and provides a foundation for its supply chain, removing barriers to accelerate the supply chain speed to provide a better service for its customers. For M&S, it provides a modern, user-friendly and configurable way to respond to fast changes in the market.

“As part of our fast-moving Never the Same Again programme, we’re re-engineering our clothing and home supply chain,” said Matt Horwood, chief technology officer at M&S. “This means ensuring our market-leading demand platform remains up to date. We’ve worked collaboratively with Blue Yonder, our long-time supply chain provider, and other partners to digitally transform from on-premises to cloud-based architecture.”

He said the ability to access new Luminate Planning capabilities would help the retailer increase the speed of its supply chain to be more agile, with a strong, modern, supply chain platform foundation to serve shoppers online and in-store.

Johan Reventberg, president in Emea for Blue Yonder, added: “By migrating to our cloud-based solution built on Microsoft Azure, M&S now has a more adaptive supply chain that can quickly pivot as customer demand changes, whether in stores, online or other channels. M&S is a very strategic customer for Blue Yonder. We continue to enable the M&S transformation journey hand-in-hand with our strategic partners. It is exciting to participate in the acceleration of M&S’s transformation into a leaner, faster, bolder business.”

As strategic partner to M&S, Blue Yonder and Microsoft, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) played a role in executing the journey to the cloud by leading the overall programme delivery and implementing data and integration patterns.

“With the help of our long-standing partner, Blue Yonder, TCS delivered a complex and business critical programme to support M&S in its digital transformation journey,” said Abhijit Niyogi, vice president at TCS.

This deployment is the latest example of Blue Yonder working in collaboration with M&S and other tech partners as part of the retailer’s transformation. Last year, M&S combined Blue Yonder’s workforce management technology and Microsoft Teams to ensure that each of its stores had the right person working the right shift at the right time. M&S’s workers can see and swap shifts, review their schedule, and make changes as needed no matter where they are.