DALLAS – Oct. 24, 2019 – SymphonyAI, the leading global provider of AI-enabled revenue growth management solutions and customer-centric insights for retailers and CPG manufacturers, today announced that AI in retail has gained significant momentum, as exhibited at the company’s recent Xcelerate Retail Forums in Dallas and Paris.
More than 400 delegates from leading retailers and CPG manufacturers, representing 27 countries from around the globe, attended the two annual forums in September and October. Throughout the events, attendees experienced how retailers are leveraging AI-enabled solutions to improve the speed and accuracy of customer insights, personalized marketing, supply chain processes and category management. Above all, customers emphasized the critical role AI plays in driving growth and profit.
AI deployments drive results for SymphonyAI’s retail and CPG customers
During the opening keynote, Dr. Pallab Chatterjee, chairman and CEO, SymphonyAI, highlighted how AI deployments have driven strong results for the company’s retail and CPG customers across marketing, promotions, category management and demand forecasting. Moreover, SymphonyAI’s customers are proving that they’re clear “Retail Winners,” by RSR’s standards, because they think opportunistically when it comes to using AI to do the following¹ :
- Improve their ability to adjust to deviations from sales forecasts
- Optimize prices and markdowns to boost sell-through
- More effectively incorporate customer segmentation and preferences into planning process
- Have a consistent, accurate and detailed demand forecasting platform
- Tailor assortments to customer preferences
- Integrate planning with cross-functional teams
- Shift to a holistic pricing, assortment and promotion decision-making process
“SymphonyAI is clearly all-in on making these objectives achievable for its customers,” said Brian Kilcourse, Co-Founder and Partner, RSR. “There’s a lot going on when it comes to AI enablement. But there are few companies that are so AI-forward that they have put ‘AI’ into their company name like SymphonyAI has done.”
CINDE, SymphonyAI’s personal decision coach, along with the company’s AI-enabled merchandising and supply chain solutions, are driving the results demonstrated at Xcelerate.
Agile merchandising allows retailers to implement the “Rule of 17”
SymphonyAI’s research reveals that 17% of items in a given category are duplicative in nature. With this in mind, it’s clear that retailers must come to terms with the “Rule of 17,” determining that category duplication is an issue to prioritize and resolve. By applying this rule to their assortments, retailers can address inventory duplication that limits revenue growth, profitability and efficiency, and also hinders their competitiveness.
The Rule of 17 is best realized through agile merchandising. Agile merchandising allows retailers to identify, design and test merchandising processes in an AI-enabled environment, empowering perpetual opportunity-based assortment changes instead of calendar-based category resets. It also has proven to significantly reduce the time and expenses traditionally associated with these processes, while increasing the accuracy and customer value.
CINDE helps retailers find hidden growth opportunities
CINDE is the first-of-its-kind conversational, AI-enabled personal decision coach designed specifically for the retail industry. As AI becomes increasingly prevalent and critical for business success, CINDE goes beyond extracting insights from data. CINDE delivers and helps decision-makers adopt prescriptive recommendations through natural language-enabled push intelligence and context-sensitive visualizations. Just 20 minutes with CINDE helps retailers find 80% of hidden revenue growth opportunities. For retailers who have adopted CINDE, the platform has been a game changer to identify and act upon opportunities and realize measurable results for their business.
One major retailer is realizing up to a four-fold increase in sales from promotions by leveraging SymphonyAI’s forecast optimization capabilities through CINDE.
AI-driven supply chain solutions improve forecast accuracy and reduce waste
The lines between retailers, brands and distributors are blurring and new paths to the consumer are further complicating forecasting and replenishment. SymphonyAI software improves demand planning and forecasting accuracy and removes manual guesswork by relying on machine learning and contextual data models. Its AI-enabled supply chain solutions allow retailers to optimize product availability by decreasing out of stocks, inventory and spoilage, as well as gain a better understanding of sales patterns and anomalies at a more detailed level.
Through the use of SymphonyAI’s AI-enabled demand forecasting solution, retailers are seeing:
- 3x improvement in forecast accuracy
- 45% reduction in waste
- 10x reduction in manual intervention
AI focus builds as retail heads into 2020
“At our Xcelerate Retail Forum in 2017, I laid out a vision for the grocery story of the future, ‘Supermarket 2020,'” said Dr. Pallab Chatterjee, chairman and CEO, SymphonyAI. “With 2020 just around the corner, we’ve seen significant reinvention begin to take place across the grocery retail and CPG industries. But the work is far from done – in fact, only 16% of retailers are leveraging AI today, according to our recent study with RIS News on AI and merchandise management. For the significant majority of retailers who have not deployed AI solutions, adoption in 2020 is critical for driving growth and profit in the next decade.”
SymphonyAI will continue to demonstrate the success its customers have seen with AI at NRF 2020 Vision: Retail’s Big Show, Jan. 12-14 in NYC, where attendees will have the opportunity to interact with CINDE and demo the personal decision coach’s latest capabilities.
About SymphonyAI
SymphonyAI is the leading global provider of role-specific, AI-enabled revenue growth management solutions and customer-centric insights for retailers and CPG manufacturers across the entire value chain. Our proven, industry-leading, AI-enabled software, coupled with the industry’s only conversational natural-language AI interface, CINDE, provides key users with proven prescriptive and preemptive recommendations that make it easy to identify end-to-end growth opportunities, activate plans, and realize measurable profit and revenue growth. Our solutions are specific to key decision-maker roles focused on profitable growth across the retail value chain from source to consumer. With our strong global partner ecosystem, we serve more than 1,200 organizations worldwide – including 15 of the top 25 global grocery retailers, 25 of the top 25 global CPG manufacturers, thousands of retail brands, and hundreds of national and regional chains – all through the Microsoft Azure Cloud. SymphonyAI is a SymphonyAI company. More at www.symphonyretailai.com.
About SymphonyAI
SymphonyAI Group is the fastest-growing private group of B2B AI companies, backed by a $1 billion commitment to deliver next-generation AI solutions for transforming the enterprise. Since its founding in 2017, SymphonyAI Group has grown rapidly to a group of six companies with a combined revenue run rate approaching $300 million. Over 1,600 talented leaders, data scientists, and other professionals operate the group under the leadership of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful serial entrepreneurs, Dr. Romesh Wadhwani. Website: www.symphonyai.com
Media Contact
Adrienne Newcomb
Ketner Group Communications (for SymphonyAI)
adrienne@ketnergroup.com
512-794-8876
¹ SymphonyAI Xcelerate Forum: AI Up Front and Center, Retail Systems Research
