Market Perspectives

The annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Digital Leadership Awards showcase the professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that contribute significantly to improved efficiency, productivity and the performance of their organization. This prestigious award recognizes leaders and pioneers who have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across their people, processes, information and technology.

Ventana Research has awarded Melanie Stocker at Burberry using Board International its prestigious 2021 Digital Leadership Award in Operations and Supply Chain. This award recognizes the individual, organization and technology that best exemplifies leadership in the technologies that support the operations or service/supply chain. All award finalists in operations and supply chain were considered for this prestigious award.

A new generation of innovative digital technology is now available for organizations to use to optimize the operations and the supply chain, aligning it to customer demand and the fulfillment of products and services. Utilizing this technology can dramatically improve the value of products and services; failing to embrace them can decrease it. The effective application and use of analytics, collaboration, machine learning, planning and IoT can increase the agility of the supply chain across sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and logistics to ensure full value is realized from the inventory of products.

Ventana Research selected Burberry for the 14th Annual Digital Leadership Award in Operations and Supply Chain for its focus on operational planning across the supply chain in a continuous and secure manner.

Burberry is a design-driven organization and, despite working in an industry that faced numerous challenges over the past several years, it was bold enough to embark on a transformational journey rather than playing safe. In 2020, Burberry made the decision to optimize the end-to-end merchandise financial planning, which supports the longer-term transformation project to integrate allocation, replenishment and assortment planning into one planning process. Despite the COVID pandemic, the project was piloted and rolled out to all markets by end of 2020. Melanie Stocker was instrumental in driving this change, bringing together key stakeholders across the business, constantly pushing everyone involved and not compromising on the results. She brought to life Burberry's vision to have one platform across BI, Finance and allocation/replenishment/supply chain. Digitalization of merchandising and buying processes start from global assortment definition through to defining an initial buy by region/store and size; visualization of assortment and is at every step of the process. Utilization of analytics to support key decisions around depth and width of the buy was possible through an intuitive and easy to use application that enabled reporting from detailed buy overview to executive summaries.

The user-centric approach as well as delivering full reporting capabilities drove user adoption as Board became a place for buying decisions. Burberry was able to streamline the buy, speeding up all heavy-lifting processes through the use of analytics, allowing the merchandising team to focus on key decisions. Focusing on visualization allows the team to combine a data-driven approach to the buy with the aesthetics of the assortment, which is a key unlock. The high adoption rate also led to a lot more focus on data accuracy and timely availability of data, leading to further benefits downstream. Being able to deliver a buy by store in a fairly short timeframe has further benefits in terms of downstream processes. Focus now is on key decision making doing the heavy lifting driven by analytics while the availability of reporting and dashboarding suite drives user adoption to almost everyone. The buying process from assortment selection to defining the buy by store can now be executed in a far shorter timeframe allowing the merchandising teams to focus on the aesthetics of the buy and be able to increase focus on data accuracy and availability.

Burberry was able to have all data and reporting available in real time, where data is governed and trusted, and was able to eliminate the silos of Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint by utilizing the built-in dashboarding. The user-centric approach to implementation changed the partnership between IT, business and the technology by choosing an open platform. There are plans to onboard more processes in the future to enable a more analytics-driven approach where appropriate. An analytics-driven approach to key decisions along the buying process enables a cross-functional collaboration through streamlined processes supported by the solution as well as governed product data and high levels of adoption. It also supports quick decision making in relation to the buys including sizing and has visibility to downstream Supply Chain, accelerating the procurement process. Burberry was able to support increased data accuracy and availability, and increase size availability in store on key drivers.

Operations and Supply Chain applications and technology is a software category in need of innovation and optimization. Board International addresses the challenges of helping organizations plan and analyze to optimize operational activities to expected outcomes. Organizations with a desire towards excellence and performance will appreciate its dedication towards continuous planning that integrates across the enterprise.

Organizations looking to maximize the value of its business and technology investments across its people and processes should consider how Operations and Supply Chain can optimize its digital potential. If you have not examined how Board International can help your organization, it is well worth your time. Congratulations, Melanie Stocker at Burberry, for your leadership.

Ventana Research offers expertise and research-based guidance to those in operations and supply chain roles to help maximize the value of products and services through more effective planning and efficient operational execution. We provide education on best practices and assessment, and adoption of applications and information. Change is required to maintain competitiveness and to enable supply chain resilience and operational readiness to achieve the outcomes your organization deserves.