METRO Delivers Tempo Award-Winning Unified Shopper Experience Accommodating Local Preferences with SymphonyAI Automated Shelf and Assortment Planning

About Metro

METRO is an international wholesale company that combines more than 60 years of wholesale experience with state-of-the-art technology powered by Metro.digital GmbH to help its customers thrive. Its main goal is to help its customers thrive in this fast-paced environment. It continuously develops and innovates through its power hubs. METRO covers the full 360 of wholesale, from fulfillment systems to delivery software.

Strategic Objectives and Business Challenge

With a flexible retail franchise model for its local business customers operating grocery shops, METRO sought to automate and speed up planograms and assortment planning for compliance in multiple countries while allowing localization to meet shopper preferences.

Solution

In selecting SymphonyAI Retail CPG, METRO selected a vendor with market-leading Al-based solutions and deep retail and wholesale domain expertise. The resulting deployment provides more automated, high-impact shelf planning, with assortment optimization that is expected to increase revenues for the franchisees.

According to Dragos Oprisor, convenience digital project manager at Metro AG, “After carefully assessing market options, we selected SymphonyAI Retail CPG as our preferred partner based on their speed to implementation, proven ROI, and ease of use to provide independent shop owners with planograms with recommendations down to the SKU level to enhance their space efficiency, reduce labor, and create a more unified experience across our many locations. In addition, our multichannel customers will be able to expedite purchases by placing their orders directly from on line platforms. After we established positive initial results within METRO Romania, our first implementation, we moved into expanding to more markets throughout Eastern Europe”

SymphonyAI Retail CPG shelf and assortment planning is flexible enough to support very diverse usage requirements, enabling owners to tailor assortment based on needs country by country, and even by region and store across the many countries using the solution.

Program Approach

As the overall program champion, Dragos has encouraged strong collaboration between users in different METRO countries to share best practices and head off potential challenges. “We hold weekly Joint meetings among shelf planning leaders in countries where the product is already in production,” Dragos notes. “It’s a very effective way for team members to share their successes and how they’ve overcome any challenges that arise. Separately, we hold calls among team members from countries where implementation is still in progress, using earlier implementation experiences to help them have the most successful, predictable and effective implementation cycle”

The calls, which are also attended by SymphonyAI experts, have set an example of cross-country collaboration designed to drive increased success for each country and to help create an environment for successful adoption of the tool. While the different businesses are using the same SymphonyAI technology environment, individual organizations’ data is kept separate to conform to privacy and security standards.

Results / Value

With automated shelf planning that accommodates local market preferences while providing a unifying framework, METRO local teams have greatly reduced manual effort required for shelf planning at the franchising shops, freeing up team members to focus on other strategic requirements. The professional customers they serve can also rely on a more unified experience across METRO and MAKRO countries, including across on line and brick-and-mortar channels.

Next Steps

METRO and SymphonyAI are in the process of implementing shelf and assortment planning for the local franchise shops in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, with go-live production expected within a few months.