SymphonyAI Honors Retail Innovators with 2024 Tempo Awards: Save A Lot, The Save Mart Companies, and Southern Co-op UK

Trailblazers recognized for cutting-edge connected retail strategies; SymphonyAI reaches major 300,000-store customer milestone

SymphonyAI Honors Retail Innovators with 2024 Tempo Awards: Save A Lot, The Save Mart Companies, and Southern Co-op UK

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Sarah Armstrong
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SymphonyAI, a leader in predictive and generative AI SaaS products for the enterprise, recognizes Save A Lot, The Save Mart Companies, and Southern Co-op UK as the 2024 Tempo Award winners for groundbreaking innovation in retail operations. In a landmark year for SymphonyAI, the company also announced its software products are now empowering retail operations in more than 300,000 stores globally, underscoring its AI innovation and achievements in the retail sector.

Enterprises are embracing SymphonyAI connected retail to holistically optimize operations by breaking down longstanding operational and data silos. The 2024 Tempo honorees—Save A Lot, The Save Mart Companies, and Southern Co-op UK—have partnered with SymphonyAI to craft their own visionary connected retail strategies. These pioneers were selected for their innovation and excellence in optimizing merchandising, store, and supply chain operations while fostering collaboration between brands and retailers to adapt to today’s fast-changing landscape. SymphonyAI's products seamlessly help retailers harness AI-driven insights for lightning-fast, informed decisions across all facets of retail—from customer interactions and sales to promotions, assortment, space utilization, real-time store conditions, and supply chain management.

“This is the year that AI became a very real transformational asset for retailers. This year’s Tempo award winners are at the forefront, using powerful AI-based connected retail products to streamline operations and adapt swiftly to the industry’s rapid shifts,” said Manish Choudhary, president of SymphonyAI’s retail-CPG division. “We are pleased to recognize Save A Lot, The Save Mart Companies, and Southern Co-op for their visionary leadership and unwavering commitment to innovation using AI-based technology to captivate customers and drive outstanding business results.”

Save A Lot Modernizes Retail Operations with Connected Retail Supply Chain and Merchandising from SymphonyAI

With SymphonyAI connected merchandising and supply chain, Save A Lot and its retail partners are gaining complete insight, down to the store-item level, into what they sell and where. The 360-degree system enables Save A Lot to view and optimize the entire supply chain, from ordering the right items and quantities from its suppliers to ensuring that each retail partner has exactly what it needs, when it needs it. Retail partners will order through the modernized system for an end-to-end supply chain view with improved automation and accuracy.

For space optimization, the Save A Lot floor and planogram designers are excited about SymphonyAI’s sophisticated and easy-to-use planning capabilities rolled out to nearly 750 stores with 4400 users. “We’ve gotten great feedback on the SymphonyAI system from our store users, who find it very user-friendly and who got great training from the SymphonyAI Learning Center,” said Stephanie Dillon, Save A Lot’s Director of Merchandising Services.

Together, SymphonyAI’s end-to-end supply chain and space planning capabilities are enabling Save A Lot and its Retail Partners to reduce waste and measurably decrease out-of-stocks, increasing shopper satisfaction and margins and ensuring the right items are in the right place at the right time.

“From the beginning, Save A Lot and SymphonyAI established a very collaborative relationship, with good engagement from the executive level all the way through to the project teams,” said Save A Lot CIO Jennifer Hopper. “There’s mutual trust that we are working together productively to advance Save A Lot’s business goals, and SymphonyAI has proven itself as a trusted advisor for our long-term transformation journey.”

The Save Mart Companies (TSMC) use SymphonyAI connected retail with category management, CINDE Shopper Insights, and promotion optimization to drive incremental sales and improve vendor collaboration

The Save Mart Companies embraced SymphonyAI connected retail as category managers and their vendor partner counterparts collaborate to act on the customer data-generated recommendations. The number of vendors enrolled in data and collaboration has grown steadily to around 45 today. For internal category reviews, they’re using SymphonyAI Promotion Evaluate to identify the best promotions to run, which has generated, on average, approximately $500,000 in incremental sales. Within each Category Action Project completed in conjunction with subscribing vendor partners, that amount nearly doubles to nearly $1 million in incremental sales.

“It’s exciting to see how we are making progress on all fronts, and we look forward to growing program participation and onboarding more supplier partners in 2025,” says Tamara Pattison, chief digital officer at The Save Mart Companies. “Leveraging the collaborative approach has enabled us to demonstrate tangible value in the form of sales and gross profit while at the same time bringing our associates up to speed with more sophisticated tools. Using the expertise of the SymphonyAI team to partner with suppliers to drive insights from Category Action Plans, as well as internal SymphonyAI assortment optimization subject matter experts, allows us to make progress across multiple aspects of the business in parallel.”

Southern Co-op implements SymphonyAI AI-based assortment and space to increase shopper engagement, turbocharge efficiency, and increase on-shelf availability

Attracted to SymphonyAI’s innovative end-to-end connected retail architecture, Southern Co-op adopted its sophisticated AI-based assortment and space products. The products align with Southern Co-op's business goals of customer-aligned assortment while also building state-of-the-art best practices into their space planning. With AI-based products from SymphonyAI, the team can be much more efficient and better meet shopper engagement and business goals.

“The advanced end-to-end range and space platform is a game-changer for us, making it possible to increase our member and customer satisfaction by better aligning and tailoring our product assortments at the SKU level by store with ease by utilizing the AI-driven clustering and product assortment functionality,” says Andrew Farndell, Head of Retail Commercial at Southern Co-op. “This also improves the efficiency in the central functions with the ability to seamlessly move between modules and workflows when working on ranging or space projects whilst supporting increased on-shelf availability with specific shelf profile and shelf capacity ranging on a store-by-store, fixture-by-fixture basis.”

SymphonyAI connected retail innovations have led to significant industry recognition including 2024 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Business Transformation – AI Innovation and the 2024 Oracle Partner Awards – EMEA Business Impact. With SymphonyAI connected retail, retailers can transform their operations by harnessing all their data and the power of predictive and Generative AI to optimize decision-making across every aspect of retail operations—from supplier, to shelf and to consumer. SymphonyAI connected retail breaks down operational silos, enabling retailers to make swift, confident decisions earlier and without blind spots. Leveraging source-agnostic data onboarding framework, SymphonyAI connected retail delivers AI-driven insights across key areas including customer behavior, sales, promotions, assortment, inventory, supply chain, and real-time shelf and store conditions, empowering retailers to enhance efficiency and profitability at every level.

About SymphonyAI

SymphonyAI is a leading enterprise AI SaaS company for digital transformation across the most critical and resilient growth verticals, including retail, consumer packaged goods, financial services, manufacturing, media, and IT/enterprise service management. SymphonyAI verticals have many leading enterprises as clients. Since its founding in 2017, SymphonyAI has grown rapidly to 3,000 talented leaders, data scientists, and other professionals. A 2024 Microsoft Partner of the Year for Business Transformation – AI Innovation, SymphonyAI is a SAIGroup company, backed by a $1 billion commitment from successful entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr. Romesh Wadhwani. Learn more at www.symphonyai.com.