In 2021, this British Supermarket was undertaking a 7-year supply chain development programme. They had identified that deploying an additional price and promotions module into the solution was key to enabling a fuller delivery. However, this was hindered by technical constraints, poorly controlled processes and misaligned policies. The client felt that improving these would unlock significant benefits.

Tessiant were asked by the client to partner with a technology consultancy to set the direction. We deployed a team of 3 people for a year, who worked alongside the consultancy’s team and the client’s people, with a view to ‘catching-up’ and integrating the module into the broader programme. We listened carefully, defined the scope and set out the ‘big questions’ to answer. We rapidly provided clear recommendations in 3 categories, and clarified the priorities, benefits and costs.

To simplify the delivery of our recommendations, we separated the actions into immediate, medium term and longer term. We highlighted 2 significant quick-wins that would start realising benefit straight away; these have already started creating a £13m annual uplift to profits.

As a result, our recommendations were signed off by the supermarket board for absorption into the programme delivery in 2023 over 18 months. The benefits released are driving the self-funding of an AI pricing optimisation model that we have been asked to support in the following year.