Marks & Spencer to undergo digital transformation for clothing and home

British department store retailer Marks & Spencer is set to undergo a digital transformation of its Clothing & Home business, in bid to create a more agile platform that responds better to consumer needs and trends.

The process will be carried out with the company’s newest partner, o9 Solutions, a software platform provider that said it would be working specifically on Marks & Spencer’s end-to-end planning systems.

As such, o9’s artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Digital Brain, will replace the retailer’s existing systems across a number of channels, with a second phase to then replace forecasting and replenishment systems, all of which will be integrated into a singular platform.

The roll-out is expected to take place over the next three years, tackling the heightened demand of the Clothing & Home business, which saw an 11.2 percent growth in sales for FY22/23.

In a release, Richard Price, managing director of the division at Marks & Spencer, said: “As we reshape for growth, we are investing to modernise and upgrade our systems so we can create greater visibility and collaboration between teams and suppliers, improve planning & availability and enable us to be more tailored and localised with our ranging.

“By having an end-to-end planning platform, we will be able to better use data and AI to inform decision making and future planning so we can continue to be more relevant, more often to our customers.”