Case study Marks & Spencer 2022–23

One M&S Food Platform.

A unified trading platform for M&S Food and 300+ suppliers. Replacing a fragmented system that had M&S ranked 11th of 13 UK retailers for supplier satisfaction.

Role: Senior Product Designer
Client: Marks & Spencer
Agency: TCS Interactive
Duration: 12 months

Brief

Replace a patchwork of legacy systems with one platform. Restore the supplier relationships that fragmented tools, email chains and spreadsheets had slowly eroded.

One platform, instead of many siloed systems
Digitise complex processes to streamline tasks and improve user satisfaction
Ensure traceability, giving both M&S and its suppliers greater visibility across trading activity
Avoid the manual workarounds driving errors and delays

My contribution

Designed across key modules including supplier directory, help & resources, range change planning and joint business planning
Led the joint business plan feature end-to-end, from focused discovery with M&S supplier management and business development teams through to design and handoff
Ran feature-level research across multiple modules, interviewing internal M&S stakeholders and supplier-side teams to establish direction and validate decisions
Co-created weekly drop decks with the Design Director and presented work directly to senior M&S stakeholders throughout the programme
Supported developer workshops and weekly check-ins, helping kick off build sprints by presenting design work and aligning development with design intent
Contributed to building the design system and supported junior and midweight designers across the programme

Challenge

The state of play.

Strained supplier relationships

Most communication between M&S and its 300+ suppliers ran through email chains and spreadsheets. When people moved on or were off sick, relationships and institutional knowledge went with them.

An error-prone operating model

A patchwork of standalone portals, spreadsheets and manual processes. Duplication was the norm and mistakes were hard to catch.

Two audiences, one tool

Suppliers and internal teams used the same system for very different jobs. Neither group was well served.

Approach

Joining the dots.

Understand context

Workshops, supplier interviews and pain-point mapping across both audiences.

Pain-point themes across M&S internal teams and 300+ suppliers
Personas for key user types, including hard-to-reach roles
Use-case library spanning data, invoices and trade

Product vision

Built a north star with enough structure for teams to navigate confidently.

Product model so users could find features by instinct
Five hero journeys to anchor the vision
Vision video to bring the strategy to life with senior stakeholders

Make it real

Aligned with engineering to ship features on a rolling basis, not in one big bang.

MVP feature releases against a staged roadmap
Component library to drive design consistency
Continued evolution of the future product model

Solutions

Key features.

Collaborative supplier directory

Surfacing key information upfront: company and site details, audits and certifications, and tailored distribution lists. A shared home for supplier relationships, not separate portals.

Built as a shared environment, not separate portals. One source of truth for both sides of the relationship.

Centralised support

Help & Resources rebuilt with clear navigation, search and self-service, reducing the volume of manual queries hitting internal teams.

Contextual over help-centre. Suppliers hit friction mid-task, not at the start.

Range change activity planner

A structured toolset for planning and managing range updates, price changes and promotions across the year, at every food level.

Surfaces dependencies early, not just logs activity. Range changes span multiple stakeholders and timelines.

Impact

An eight-place leap.

GCA supplier ranking

From 11th to 3rd in the UK Groceries Code Adjudicator survey.

11→3

Discovery to live

Full platform built and shipped within a year.

<12m

Remarkable Team Award

Won by the One M&S Food Platform team at the M&S Getting Set 22/23 event.

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