SOK Selects Blue Yonder to Digitally Transform Assortment Planning Capabilities

To make customer-driven product decisions to build brand loyalty, retailers need to invest in the right solutions to support their assortment strategy. That’s why Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta (SOK) has chosen to digitally transform its assortment capabilities with Blue Yonder. The company will implement Blue Yonder’s assortment management solution powered by Luminate Platform.

S-Group is a customer-owned Finnish network of companies in the retail and service sectors, with more than 1,900 outlets in Finland. S Group consists of 19 independent regional cooperatives. SOK, which is owned by the cooperatives, serves as the central company for the cooperatives and provides them with procurement, expert, and support services. S Group offers services in the supermarket trade, department store and specialty store trade, service station store and fuel sales, travel and hospitality business, and hardware trade.

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SOK’s consumer goods categories were utilizing an inefficient, legacy solution that could not meet its changing business needs and ambitions, so the company turned to Blue Yonder. With Blue Yonder, SOK will be able to:

• Utilize a modern solution that caters to the unique needs of its consumer goods assortment planning (e.g., visual merchandising, order-to-buy, etc.) while bringing in advanced analytics and features supporting commerce assortment planning.
• Provide its category managers with the ability to make better assortment decisions through forecasting, planning, and fulfilment functionalities, creating efficiencies across the end-to-end business process.
• Improve situational awareness by making budgets, assortment decisions, and sales more transparent.

“We look forward to growing our collaboration with Blue Yonder and implementing a truly state-of-art solution in our consumer goods categories. With the new assortment management solution, our category managers will be able to make smarter and better assortment decisions, thus creating increased efficiency across the value-chain from commerce to the supply chain. All of this is important in an increasingly digital and competitive marketplace,” said Mikko Hänninen, IT area lead, Assortment Planning and Space Management, SOK ITD.

Blue Yonder’s assortment management solution combines in-depth analytics, consumer purchase preferences, assortment lifecycle planning, and sizing and pre-pack optimization into a simplified workflow. The solution will allow SOK to remove the guesswork and drives higher sales and margins across all channels with localized customer insights. Powered by Luminate Platform, the solution will leverage industry-leading artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities, enabling SOK to better predict and pivot to meet its consumer needs and improve profitability.

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“We are looking forward to supporting SOK’s journey to modernize its assortment capabilities. SOK found the user interface and solution architecture of our world-class assortment solution to be what they were looking for. And with the high scalability of Luminate Platform underpinning the solution, SOK will be able to reach new commercial heights to grow their consumer goods business and embrace the possibilities of digital commerce,” said Vince Beacom, senior vice president, Retail, Blue Yonder.

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