Sainsbury’s is partnering with Amazon’s cloud services offering AWS, as well as SAP and Accenture, to “revolutionise its commercial systems”, it has announced.
The work will see the supermarket consolidate its legacy systems, shifting them to the cloud. The move – which is expected to take several years – would “achieve increased business agility” and a “simplified and cost optimised technology estate”, Sainsbury’s said.
SAP has been appointed to lead the design of the new solution with lead transformation partner Accenture and cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“We’re excited to be working… to completely revolutionise our commercial systems, which are the heart and lungs of our business operations,” said Rhian Bartlett, chief food commercial officer at Sainsbury’s. “This is a huge step forward in our ‘Next Level’ Sainsbury’s plan, as we continue to invest in market leading technology that allows us to keep growing at pace and maintain our momentum towards becoming first choice for food.”
By adding “new capability and capacity” to its commercial systems, the Sainsbury’s ambition is to manage products on promotion in “increasingly flexible ways, allowing a more tailored value experience” for its customers.
“The project will benefit customers, suppliers, colleagues and shareholders, simplifying and integrating Sainsbury’s systems and tools into one cohesive platform and creating a single ecosystem for Sainsbury’s colleagues and suppliers to communicate,” it added. “This will reduce complexity and improve efficiency for suppliers, helping drive returns.”
Sainsbury’s set out its Next Level strategy in February this year – a programme intended to build on the group’s ‘Food First’ strategy, launched in 2020 – with eight new commitments to be delivered by March 2027, including growing food volumes ahead of the market and generating free cashflow of £1.6bn.
Investment in technology and infrastructure was also a key plank of the plan, and forecast to deliver £1bn of structural cost reduction.
“While I’m proud of the progress we’ve made to date, we’re only just at the beginning of rediscovering quite what this business is capable of,” Simon Roberts, Sainsbury’s CEO, said at the time.
While the plan underwhelmed the City amid concerns over upfront costs and a lack of clarity around some commitments, some deemed it “pretty basic… but also ballsy”.
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