Wickes paints consumer-centric omnichannel fulfilment strategy with Blue Yonder

With more people working from and staying at home, home improvement projects have become the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s why Wickes, the market leading, home improvement retailer, sought to digitally transform its supply chain with Blue Yonder. The retailer will utilise Blue Yonder’s demand and fulfillment capabilities through Luminate^TM Planning to quickly pivot to forecast consumers’ rapidly changing shopping patterns to address demand and accurately  align product availability and supply.

One of the UK’s favorite home improvement retailers, Wickes operates more than 240 stores with over 10,000 products ranging from kitchens and bathrooms to paint and timber. During 2020, Wickes reported like-for-like sales growth of 19.3 per cent driven by its digitally-led business model.

Wickes was looking for solutions that allowed for multi-channel forecasting and efficient omnichannel fulfilment. In addition, as part of the retailer’s continued demerger from its parent company, Travis Perkins, Wickes required a robust, reliable and scalable solution that would support its growth.

With Blue Yonder, Wickes will:

• Use machine learning to provide a demand projection with calculated business impact and risk, that enables better inventory management and an improved understanding of demand drivers and customer behavior.
• Automate manual tasks, increasing planner productivity by freeing them up to focus on strategic decision making and value-add activities.

“To meet current demand and future growth, we need to be able to plan and fulfill both in our stores and online for our customers. By expanding our relationship with Blue Yonder, we can further invest in our roadmap to be the premier home improvements retailer in the UK,” said Fraser Longden, chief operating officer, Wickes.

Blue Yonder’s Luminate Planning, a cloud-based solutions portfolio built on Microsoft Azure, provides Wickes with a more accurate view into demand by consolidating and synchronising demand signals, as well as external variables across the retailers’ physical stores and online. Wickes can now evaluate demand scenarios and use prescriptive recommendations to make more accurate decisions; from staging the right inventory through the distribution network to minimizing stock-outs and maximizing inventory turns.

“With Blue Yonder, Wickes will be able to remove silos in its supply chain and have better visibility, as well as the ability to quickly pivot as customer demand changes – whether in stores or online,” said Johan Reventberg, president, EMEA, at Blue Yonder. “We are looking forward to continuing our solid relationship with Wickes to help them increase the value out of their supply chain.”