Accenture has invested in Profitmind, a retail know-how firm that two years in the past developed an agentic AI platform to assist retailers automate choices throughout pricing, stock and planning.
The businesses declined to specify the dimensions of the funding, although it’s believed to be a big, minority, non-controlling stake.
The funding, made by means of Accenture Ventures, is geared to additional broaden Accenture’s present information and AI capabilities in retail, “enabling shoppers to bridge the hole between insights and motion.”
The partnership additionally furthers the expansion potential of Profitmind by offering it with a path to Accenture’s shopper base. Accenture has a worldwide attain with greater than 900 retail shoppers.
“In retail, AI is reinventing how individuals store, how companies function and the way staff work,” mentioned Jill Standish, Accenture’s international retail lead, in an announcement. “Retailers are navigating relentless disruption, and nowhere is the impression extra acute than in merchandising, typically thought-about the guts and soul of retail. However executives are overwhelmed by huge quantities of information, reviews and spreadsheets, leaving little time for efficient decision-making. Profitmind bridges the hole between perception and motion by means of AI. It mirrors how retailers run their companies, connecting pricing, stock, promotions, and assortment into clear, prioritized suggestions that may be trusted and executed with the sooner response wanted in an more and more aggressive area.”
“This partnership with Accenture is basically about now scaling and taking the platform a lot broader,” mentioned Dr. Mark Chrystal, co-founder and chief govt officer of Profitmind. “We’ve acquired a couple of dozen clients proper now, starting from $100 billion right down to $20 million in dimension however now we’re able to scale.”
He declined to specify the retail shoppers. “We expect we had been the primary to develop an agentic platform, definitely for retail, and so we’ve been spending a whole lot of time testing, validating, ensuring the platform works,” he mentioned.
Earlier than Profitmind, Chrystal labored for a few years in retail, together with as an govt at Rue 21, American Eagle Outfitters, David’s Bridal, and The Disney Retailer, serving in planning, advertising, know-how, analytics, allocation, provide chain and e-commerce roles at completely different occasions.
“The software program business is basically good at growing level options that do one factor, like value optimization, or replenishment, or allocation, or some very particular utility. But it surely didn’t matter what options I dropped at the retail groups as a result of they inevitably ended up again in Excel spreadsheets to make their choices,” mentioned Chrystal.
“For 25 years I watched the identical actual enterprise course of each single week, 52 weeks a 12 months, the place the enterprise groups would manually go in and pull reviews out of the methods. They’d dump information onto Excel spreadsheets to attempt to create a rounded view of what’s taking place within the enterprise. They’d spend all day Monday, and a few of Tuesday, getting ready for an govt assembly to current their factors of view on what’s taking place and what actions to take, after which they might take some actions with restricted confidence, questioning whether or not they had been shifting the needle on the enterprise or not. It was at all times an enormous funding in time each week and extremely inefficient.
“Retail is a staff sport,” mentioned Chrystal. “It shouldn’t be finished in silos. Whenever you change a promotion, it impacts stock. Whenever you have an effect on stock, it impacts costs. Merchandising modifications have an effect on advertising. It’s a must to be collectively, across the desk, having these conversations. It’s a must to be taking a look at information and insights throughout the corporate, however software program options should not arrange that method. They’re arrange in these silos to do one factor nicely. As I checked out that course of, it felt like AI was getting to a degree the place it might truly replicate the work the groups had been doing and really get them out of that handbook course of and extra into the decision-making chair.”
So Chrystal dropped out of retail about 4 years in the past and went to Silicon Valley to companion with leaders in AI to construct the Profitmind platform.
In a nutshell, right here’s how Profitmind works. It gathers all the info in a enterprise – gross sales efficiency, assortment data, promotional information, and so forth. – scrapes the web sites of rivals gathering data on their assortments, costs, and different areas, and even reads their 10Ks and 8Ks. Or as Chrystal mentioned, Profitmind “collects all of the market information it will possibly get its arms on. It should take a look at rivals, when it comes to what they’re attempting to do. It should study information coming in. It fashions all of that. It finds the patterns. It learns how clients reply to merchandise, costs and promotions. After which each week, when the enterprise staff is available in at eight o’clock within the morning on a Monday, it’s finished all of the analytics work for them. And it’s saying in prioritized order, ‘listed below are the actions you possibly can take now to enhance the efficiency of your online business and seize alternatives with clients relative to cost and assortment.’ And it truly explains why and what the impression on the enterprise can be.”
Chrystal mentioned Profitmind offers “a software set that’s been lacking in retail” and is a substitute for the various hours of handbook labor retail groups put in, and might speed up decision-making.
Requested if adopting the AI-powered Profitmind would result in retail staff shedding their jobs, Chrystal replied: “That’s not my intent. I’m a retailer. The one factor I’ve finished for 30 years is try to make retailers extra profitable, and principally working for them and now constructing software program. What I see taking place with this software program is we’re going to shift jobs. We’re going to wish fewer people who find themselves in these Excel spreadsheets each Monday and Tuesday, however these persons are going to shift into specializing in merchandise and execution and servicing clients higher, and I believe that’s a greater use of time and sources.”
Profitmind is a non-public firm with a couple of completely different house owners together with MVP, a enterprise capital fund in Pittsburgh; Lightscape Companions, which invests in early stage corporations, and Carnegie Mellon, the college in Pittsburgh.
Accenture offers a variety of companies in such areas as technique, operations, know-how and digital.
“By teaming with Accenture, we’re straight addressing the operational complexities retailers face throughout markets, channels and information methods,” mentioned Chrystal, in his ready assertion. “After launching the primary agentic platform for retail at NRF 2024, this partnership [with Accenture] permits us to carry that innovation to extra international shoppers, delivering constant options that enhance agility and switch vital insights into tangible enterprise outcomes.”
In one other key growth to assist scale its enterprise, Profitmind revealed earlier this week that will probably be accessible within the Microsoft Market, which is a web-based vacation spot for companies to purchase cloud options, AI apps, and brokers.
“Microsoft’s international attain, and its observe document in enterprise software program give Profitmind a robust basis to scale quick,” Chrystal mentioned earlier this week. “With Profitmind on the Microsoft Market, enterprise retailers can undertake our agentic AI resolution intelligence platform extra simply and transfer from spreadsheets to profit-first suggestions sooner.”
“Profitmind reveals the true impression of agentic AI in merchandising—turning advanced information into clear, prioritized actions that assist retailers transfer sooner,” Keith Mercier, vice chairman, worldwide retail & client items business, Microsoft, mentioned in an announcement. “Merchandising and stock planning sit on the coronary heart of each retail operation. By combining Profitmind’s clever automation with the facility of Microsoft’s platforms, we’re serving to retailers drive higher choices and streamline execution inside their present workflows.”
Within the software program business, there’s a excessive price of attrition amongst startups. However with its new partnerships with Microsoft and Accenture, the two-year-old Profitmind will get a leg up.
That is the second funding in an AI firm Accenture has made this week. It earlier revealed that it had acquired the U.Okay.-based AI firm School for an quantity that valued the agency at greater than $1 billion. School, which was based in 2014, employs greater than 400 individuals and Accenture mentioned the acquisition would assist its clients “reinvent core and demanding enterprise processes” utilizing AI.
