Value Chain and CX Investments: Sainsbury’s, SpartanNash, and Casey’s Bolster Business Growth Efforts

Three retail brands — Sainsbury’s, SpartanNash, and Casey’s — have made significant investments in their business growth in recent days. Two of the companies are looking to transform their value chains, implementing enterprise-wide, supply chain-focused efforts. Meanwhile, SpartanNash is expanding on its robot success story. 

Sainsbury’s

Multi-brand retailer Sainsbury’s is investing in its value chain, implementing an end-to-end supply chain transformation that will impact demand planning, store order planning, fulfillment, and more. 

The company is tapping into tech from Blue Yonder to power these efforts, looking to replace existing solutions with next-gen, machine-powered tech that will improve forecasting and replenishment for its more than 2,000 stores. 

Specific upgrades will include:

• Improvements in inventory stockholding and availability KPIs, powered by machine learning forecasting and multi-echelon replenishment
• Scalable and more resilient IT architecture
• Reduced key systems to eliminate redundancy, reduce tech risk, and improve UX
• Simplified and automated user experiences with standardized workflows to increase user productivity

“We are simplifying our operations at pace wherever we can in order to invest in improving food quality, increasing choice and innovation, and consistently delivering value to customers. Our Supply Chain Transformation Program will enable us to get products to the right place at the right time for customers by improving our ability to efficiently transport products across our network,” said Meinir Childs, director of supply chain, Sainsbury’s, in a statement. 

“For the first time ever, we are now using machine learning to enable automatic forecast calculation and generation of store orders, so this is an exciting moment for our business,” Childs added.

Did You Know?

RIS has a brand-new value-chain focused event coming your way! This fall, RIS News and Retail Leader are joining forces to debut Value Chain Tech, a unique new annual event focused on the technologies that power the key pillars of value chain success: Agility. Resiliency. Collaboration. Sustainability.