Last Friday, Retail Week announced the shortlist of candidates for the Tech.AWARDS 2018 . Reply and M&S were honoured in the category Tech Collaboration of the Year for the launch of M&S’ new cloud-based Supplier Portal to support the movement and visibility of stock programme.
The Tech.AWARDS celebrate the greatest innovations in retail technology across Europe, highlighting how technology is enhancing customer experience and revolutionizing the retail supply chain through clever digital ideas and successful teams.
Logistics Reply, in conjunction with M&S, created an online portal which allows M&S food suppliers to have access to a system that helps manage the accurate despatch of stock into the M&S network. The Supplier Portal is part of a programme which delivers visibility for M&S of all incoming products as soon as they are despatched from each Supplier location.
The M&S Supplier Portal is designed for ease-of-use, quick setup and to eliminate manual data input – with total training/go-live in just one day.
The new Portal solution allows Suppliers to accurately despatch stock into the M&S network and contributes in delivering precise stock movement information which is delivering increased customer availability in store.
What makes this project unique, is that from the start it was a true joint effort between Reply, M&S and their Suppliers: during the Software Development stage, M&S and a number of Suppliers worked together to track progress and provide feedback on development. This allowed the Portal to be developed by Suppliers and M&S for Suppliers – and therefore be an immediately practical solution which could instantly be rolled out as a fully working solution.
During the rollout period of the transformation project, M&S and Reply worked closely with Suppliers at their despatch locations to ensure activation was as smooth as possible and that zero problems were experienced at go-live.
Syd Reid, Director of Food Supply Chain and Logistics at M&S, said “We are delighted to be shortlisted for such a prestigious award, which reflects the collective hard work and dedication put in by the M&S Team, the Development Team at Reply, and not least the Suppliers themselves.”
”Working so closely with M&S and its Suppliers has given us immense satisfaction – the M&S Portal project embodies Partnership, Collaboration and Innovation which are core brand values for Reply.” Said Francesco Soncini Sessa, Partner at Logistics Reply.
The Tech.AWARDS will take place in London on 13th September 2018. Stay tuned to discover all of the winners.