Company Name: Blue Yonder
Author: Rhonda Stinson, Principal Solutions Advisor
Tenure With Current Company: 10 years
Years of Industry Experience: 32 years

For 3 decades, Rhonda has been a major contributor in the Category Management space. Starting her career as a Category Manager for a major CPG company to heading up a consultancy practice, she has provided guidance in many facets, including strategic advisory, training, design, and implementation. Rhonda “bleeds blue”, maintaining that Blue Yonder is the best-in-class solution for Category Management.

Give us a brief history of your company, when and how did you get started and what is your high-level mission statement?

Blue Yonder originated in the late 1980s, following the acquisition of Intactix, subsequently rebranded as JDA Retail Planning. The company has consistently expanded its capabilities through strategic acquisitions. Today, Blue Yonder stands as the global leader in digital supply chain transformation. Retailers, manufacturers, and 3PL service providers worldwide depend on Blue Yonder to enhance and accelerate their supply chain operations. Our platform, featuring multi-enterprise and multi-tier network capabilities, offers:

Prescriptive and dynamic category planning
Accurate forecasting
Transformative inventory and capacity management
Transportation sensing for inventory control disruptions

Blue Yonder empowers businesses to navigate modern supply chain complexities and volatility, fostering more resilient and sustainable supply chains. Our mission is to delight consumers, scale profitably, and ensure seamless operations.

What would you like CMA and SIMA members to know about your brand/company?

For supply chain success, integrated planning and execution are crucial. Category Management serves as the lifeblood of the supply chain, with data being the core of all operations. Traditionally, data integration faced challenges, often resulting in delays. Blue Yonder has addressed these disconnects by developing a unified data model that supports all our solutions. This platform empowers teams to utilize, optimize, and enhance shared data across the business effectively.

By continuously feeding store performance, customer data, assortments, space constraints, and planogram logistics back into the supply chain, we create a closed feedback loop. This approach improves future planning, boosts customer satisfaction, enhances inventory control, and drives greater revenues.

What is the most common question you hear from current and potential customers, and how do you answer it?

How do I support store specific planning, and at scale?

Scalability is achieved through solid data insights and Integrated Planning and Execution (IP&E). Traditionally, siloed solutions have relied on point-to-point integrations, causing delays. Blue Yonder has created a truly integrated planning and execution ecosystem, characterized by:

Unified data model
Ability to optimize assortments at SKU/store level with a focus on capacity, and a data-driven, targeted product mix
AI/ML-based execution, also, grounded in factual data
Purposeful right-sizing

Our solutions are fully connected, offering interoperability beyond category support, including all planning and execution aspects. Imagine integrating final category plans seamlessly into forecasting cycles, warehouse staging, transportation planning, and inventory optimization. With Blue Yonder, these possibilities are brought to life.

Any white space in the industry or areas you are looking to expand into?

Blue Yonder envisions "continuous category management," where companies proactively update assortments and spacing in reaction to small, impactful market changes or "triggers," rather than waiting for large market shifts. By linking category management to broader business operations and maintaining a dynamic shared data set, our platform can continuously monitor constraints such as trend shifts and capacity.

This allows for immediate notifications about impactful changes, resulting in:
Space-aware assortment shifts requiring planogram and/or macro plan modifications
More effective assortments aligned with evolving customer demand
Improved On-Time In-Full (OTIF) performance with optimal inventory investment

This approach enhances responsiveness and adaptability, creating opportunities for expansion in real-time category management solutions.

What is the most important thing that needs to be addressed in the category management and shopper insights disciplines going forward?

The future of category management and shopper insights lies in gaining a more precise understanding of shopper behavior—what consumers are seeking across all aisles and channels, both in-store and online. Technology can offer retailers fact-based, real-time insights to bridge the gap between insight and action significantly. However, this requires consolidating data from various sources, such as loyalty programs and in-store IoT and digital systems.

Blue Yonder addresses the analytical time drain by delivering daily briefs that highlight category KPI disruptions. Instead of spending 70% of your time analyzing spreadsheets and BI reports, you receive concise briefs that identify opportunities and provide decision support. This helps you anticipate disruptions and achieve On-Shelf Availability (OSA) targets effectively.

How are you thinking about the next 3-5 years in retail?

The future of retail has already begun. Retailers must transition towards connected, cognitive, and composable technology that supports growth at their own pace, allowing them to utilize only what they need. Shoppers perceive their interactions as part of a unified relationship with retailers. Therefore, retailers must refocus on personalized relationships and implement integrated solutions that cater to current and future demands.