Southern Co-op and Scotmid tap SymphonyAI assortment and space planning solutions across food businesses
Southern Co-op and Scottish Midland Co-operative (Scotmid) have selected SymphonyAI Retail CPG assortment and space planning solutions for implementation across the food business in the companies’ nearly 500 managed and franchise convenience stores in various regions of the UK.
The two businesses, which are both members of Federal Retail Trade and Services (FRTS), a central co-op food buying group, are looking to tailor the assortments, shelves, and floor spaces at both the store and category levels for data driven alignment with the evolving needs of each store’s local customers.
“The advanced end-to-end range and space platform will be a game changer for us, making it possible to increase our member and customer satisfaction by better aligning and tailoring our product assortments at the SKU level by store with ease by utilising the AI driven clustering and product assortment functionality,” says Andrew Farndell, Head of Trading and Format, Southern Co-op.
“This will also improve the efficiency in the central functions with the ability to seamlessly move between modules and workflows when working on ranging or space projects whilst supporting increased on-shelf availability with specific shelf profile and shelf capacity ranging on a store by store, fixture by fixture basis.”
“I have been particularly impressed by the caliber and commitment of the whole SymphonyAI team,” says Mark Smith, CEO, Southern Co-op.
“This project is already running as a genuine partnership with our vendor partners using their experience to help accelerate us at real pace to build our new range and space capability.”
“The SymphonyAI team are retail focused AI expert innovators,” says Stewart Dobbie, Director of Programme Ford, Scotmid.
“The SymphonyAI category planning platform is best-of-breed, and the SymphonyAI team is already bringing new innovations to us on top — an example being their computer vision-based store intelligence.”
John Brodie, CEO at Scotmid, adds: "Our core purpose is to serve our local communities and improve people’s everyday lives and SymphonyAI Retail CPG’s new range and space platform will further allow us to deliver on this core purpose.”
“We are excited to collaborate closely and productively with Southern and Scotmid Co-operatives to deliver measurable value as they deploy our leading AI technology to serve customers better, improve efficiencies, and present a consistent and localised shopper experience,” says Dusan Rnic, Senior Vice President, International at SymphonyAI Retail CPG.
“Southern and Scotmid both anticipate the enormous value of intelligent space aware assortment, and through our partnership, they can efficiently realise that value. We look forward to strong mutual success for many years to come.”
Continue reading…