Case Study: Marks & Spencer maximizes profits and customer experience with Quantum Retail

Marks & Spencer Maximized Profits And The Customer Experience With Quantum Retail

Marks & Spencer faced a major overhaul of its foods business forecasting, ordering and allocation after two decades on a legacy system and a concurrent ERP move to SAP. The retailer needed a solution that could handle high SKU-store complexity, perishable inventory and long lead times, support rapid new-product churn (more than 20% assortment change) and provide a “high intelligence, low touch” interface for business users. Marks & Spencer selected Quantum Retail and its Q platform (Allocation & Replenishment and Order Planning) to meet those needs.

Quantum Retail implemented Q’s advanced retail decisioning at SKU/store/day granularity and integrated it with M&S’s category and supply-chain processes, using exception-based workflows and automated learning to drive ordering and allocation. The result: improved customer service levels by +5%, forecast accuracy gains of ~3%, up to a 40% reduction in workload for routine tasks, reduced holding/warehousing costs and waste, and support for 22 consecutive quarters of like‑for‑like growth (sales up 3.4% overall in a reported period). Quantum Retail also sped supplier planning and enabled successful large-scale new-product launches (e.g., expanding stocking points from 4,000 to 17,000), strengthening both operational efficiency and customer availability.

Marks & Spencer