Microsoft and dunnhumby join to transform US$5.9 trillion retail sector

By Elly Yates-Roberts on 10 January 2020

Microsoft and customer data science firm dunnhumby have partnered in a bid to transform the US5.9 trillion retail industry. The partnership will see dunnhumby move its customer insights products to the Microsoft Azure cloud – a move that will give retailers and suppliers better access to data analysis tools.

According to recent research by dunnhumby and Forrester Consulting, “85% of grocery retailers globally lack the resources, technology, people and processes to use insights to monetise their data and drive customer experience”. The partnership between Microsoft and dunnhumby will give retailers and suppliers the processing power of Azure with dunnhumby’s machine learning data science to find critical insights. This will enable them to improve company performance, find and follow new trends and enhance brand loyalty.

“Retailers sit on vast amounts of data but often struggle to create meaningful insights for themselves or their suppliers,” said Clare Barclay, chief operating officer at Microsoft UK. “Through this strategic partnership, retailers across the globe will benefit from the powerful intelligence that dunnhumby delivers through its market-leading tools with the scale, security and speed-to-market that has become synonymous with the Azure platform.”