Marks & Spencer selects Board for Working Capital Reporting

The multinational retailer will enable better decision-making by closing the loop between analytics, simulation, and planning.

Multinational British retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has selected the Board decision-making platform from Board International to transform its working capital reporting and forecasting activities.

Previously, M&S’ process involved numerous complex spreadsheets which required time-consuming manual input from Financial Analysts to collect, analyze, and distribute data from various systems such as the ERP. After reviewing the market for an alternative, Board was chosen based on its flexible toolkit approach, which will provide M&S with a solution which can adapt to changing business requirements with ease. 

Board unifies business intelligence, predictive analytics, and planning functionality in one platform. It will increase the efficiency of M&S’ cash flow reporting and forecasting process by automating the production of working capital reports and enabling more detail to be circulated earlier at month-end. Board will also save time for multiple teams within the group, enable users to make better decisions thanks to greater integrity of data, and drive collaboration thanks to inbuilt communication capabilities.

“Even a 0.1% improvement in process effectiveness with our scale can deliver benefits measured in millions of pounds,” says Davide Breda, Head of Corporate Business Information Strategy at M&S. “The business used to forecast on a much higher level as manual tools couldn’t deliver the granularity needed, but with Board this will change completely. The fact the solution is owned by us and flexible enough to change with our needs was one of the key reasons it stood out to us.”

“Board’s unique drag-and-drop, no coding interface is ideal for enabling businesses to make responsive decisions in changeable marketplaces. We’re delighted to be helping prestigious retailers such as M&S to realize these benefits,” commented Gavin Fallon, General Manager UK, Nordics, and South Africa at Board International.

About Marks & Spencer:

Marks & Spencer Group plc (also known as M&S) is a major British multinational retailer headquartered in Westminster, London that specialises in selling clothing, home products and luxury food products. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange. www.marksandspencer.com 

About Board:

Board is the #1 decision-making platform. Founded in 1994 and Headquartered in Chiasso, Switzerland, and Boston, MA, Board International has enabled more than 3000 companies worldwide to effectively deploy Business Intelligence, Corporate Performance Management and Predictive Analytics applications on a single platform. The Board platform allows companies to achieve a single, accurate and complete view of business information and full control of performance across the entire organization. Thanks to Board, global enterprises such as Coca-Cola, DHL, KPMG, Puma, Siemens, KFC and ZF Group have deployed end-to-end decision-making applications in a fraction of the time and cost associated with traditional solutions.