UNION, N.J., Sept. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Bed Bath
& Beyond Inc. (Nasdaq: BBBY) announced today that it has
expanded its relationship with Google Cloud through a multi-year
collaboration that will accelerate its omni-always transformation,
enabling the Company to better serve customers in a digital-first
environment as it rebuilds authority in the Home, Baby, Beauty and
Wellness markets. To perform this work, Deloitte will serve
as strategic transformation services partner.
The Company has committed to a five-year agreement with Google
Cloud to deploy a range of platform solutions to further
personalize the shopping experience for customers, enhance
fulfilment capacity, and optimize merchandise planning and demand
forecasting. Bed Bath & Beyond will leverage a number of
Google Cloud technologies, including BigQuery, Spanner, Google
Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine, to establish a
singular view of customer data across its portfolio of
brands.
Bed Bath & Beyond's President and CEO, Mark Tritton said, "From day one, Google Cloud
has leaned in, showing true partnership and a desire to help us
grow, be more efficient and effective as a business. I
welcome the opportunity to expand our relationship, supported by
Deloitte, creating a unique combination of expertise and authority
to deliver a truly omni-always, personalized shopping experience
for our customers."
Chief Operating Officer and President of buybuy BABY,
John Hartmann said, "The end-to-end
modernization of our technology infrastructure is driving
substantial digital growth and strong customer adoption of new
services like Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store (BOPIS) and Curbside
Pickup. We're delighted to partner with Google Cloud and
Deloitte, to accelerate our efforts to build our business. By
combining our unique data and insights in the Home, Baby, Beauty
and Wellness markets with the exceptional platform capabilities and
expertise that Google and Deloitte provide, we will deliver a more
agile, responsive, and customer-inspired shopping experience,
making it even easier to feel at home with Bed Bath &
Beyond."
Bed Bath & Beyond initially partnered with Google Cloud in
2017, leveraging their BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) white glove
service to accommodate the surge in traffic during these moments
and ensure revenue-critical systems were up-and-running.
After pivoting rapidly to meet the sharp rise in digital
demand throughout the COVID-19 period, Bed Bath & Beyond is
expanding its partnership with Google, with support from Deloitte,
to focus on and enhance the following core areas:
- Data-driven, customer-centric decision-making:
Bed Bath & Beyond will utilize BigQuery to grow its machine
learning and analytics capabilities. The Company will operate these
new capabilities to garner unique insights and expertise in its
core markets to enhance the Company's ability to project future
sales trends and, based on those projections, to make instant,
customer-centric decisions with real-time data, better serving the
market with improved demand prediction and optimized inventory and
merchandise planning.
- Delivering a seamless, omni-always customer experience:
Google Cloud will also help Bed Bath & Beyond meet the needs of
its customers by creating a truly personalized, omni-always
shopping experience with a more agile and predictive e-commerce
platform. The Company will also be able to use Google Cloud's
AI-powered solutions to support the customers' entire shopping
experience, from search navigation and checkout to delivery or
pickup.
- Optimizing fulfillment strategy: Bed Bath & Beyond
will be able to leverage Google Cloud's technology to harness its
data and drive smart allocation to enhance management of
fulfillment and cost. The partnership provides enhanced fulfillment
capabilities at a massive scale to optimize virtually every aspect
of the business, from demand forecasting to supply chain logistics
and the customer experience.
"Retailers are sitting on an incredible amount of data today,
but this data is often siloed and lacks real-time processing.
And high-traffic events like Cyber Monday or the COVID-19
pandemic only put more stress on systems," said Carrie Tharp, VP of Retail & Consumer at
Google Cloud. "By migrating to Google Cloud, Bed Bath &
Beyond expects to be able to reduce cost and drive business value
through real-time analytics across marketing, merchandising, supply
chain and more."
"Bed Bath and Beyond has a long history of being customer
oriented. This technology will provide its customers with new
accessible digital platforms and channels," said Christina
Bieniek, Chief Commercial Officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
"This transformation will provide the business with
a new level of agility that will allow it to respond quickly to
customer demands and market conditions."
About the Company: Bed Bath & Beyond
Inc. and subsidiaries (the "Company") is an omnichannel
retailer that makes it easy for our customers to feel at home.
The Company sells a wide assortment of domestic merchandise
and home furnishings. The Company also provides a variety of
textile products, amenities and other goods to institutional
customers in the hospitality, cruise line, healthcare and other
industries. Additionally, the Company is a partner in a joint
venture which operates retail stores in Mexico under the
name Bed Bath & Beyond.
Bed Bath & Beyond operates websites
at bedbathandbeyond.com and bedbathandbeyond.ca.
About Google Cloud: Google Cloud provides organizations
with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry
solutions. We deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions that
leverage Google's cutting-edge technology to help companies operate
more efficiently and adapt to changing needs, giving customers a
foundation for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries
turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve their most
critical business problems.
About Deloitte: Please
see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description
of our legal structure.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements,
including, but not limited to, the Company's progress and
anticipated progress towards its long-term objectives and the
success of its relationship with Google Cloud. Many of these
forward-looking statements can be identified by use of words such
as may, will, expect, anticipate, approximate, estimate, assume,
continue, model, project, plan, goal, and similar words and
phrases, although the absence of those words does not necessarily
mean that statements are not forward-looking. The Company's actual
results and future financial condition may differ materially from
those expressed in any such forward-looking statements as a result
of many factors. Such factors include, without limitation: general
economic conditions including the housing market, a challenging
overall macroeconomic environment and related changes in the
retailing environment; risks associated with COVID-19 and the
governmental responses to it, including its impacts across the
Company's businesses on demand and operations, as well as on the
operations of the Company's suppliers and other business partners,
and the effectiveness of the Company's actions taken in response to
these risks; consumer preferences, spending habits and adoption of
new technologies; demographics and other macroeconomic factors that
may impact the level of spending for the types of merchandise sold
by the Company; civil disturbances and terrorist acts; unusual
weather patterns and natural disasters; competition from existing
and potential competitors across all channels; pricing pressures;
liquidity; the ability to achieve anticipated cost savings, and to
not exceed anticipated costs, associated with organizational
changes and investments, including the Company's strategic
restructuring program; the ability to attract and retain qualified
employees in all areas of the organization; the cost of labor,
merchandise and other costs and expenses; potential supply chain
disruption due to trade restrictions, and other factors such as
natural disasters, such as pandemics, including the COVID-19
pandemic, political instability, labor disturbances, product
recalls, financial or operational instability of suppliers or
carriers, and other items; the ability to find suitable locations
at acceptable occupancy costs and other terms to support the
Company's plans for new stores; the ability to establish and
profitably maintain the appropriate mix of digital and physical
presence in the markets it serves; the ability to assess and
implement technologies in support of the Company's development of
its omnichannel capabilities; the ability to effectively and timely
adjust the Company's plans in the face of the rapidly changing
retail and economic environment, including in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic; uncertainty in financial markets; volatility in
the price of the Company's common stock and its effect, and the
effect of other factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, on the
Company's capital allocation strategy; risks associated with the
ability to achieve a successful outcome for its business concepts
and to otherwise achieve its business strategies; the impact of
intangible asset and other impairments; disruptions to the
Company's information technology systems including but not limited
to security breaches of systems protecting consumer and employee
information or other types of cybercrimes or cybersecurity attacks;
reputational risk arising from challenges to the Company's or a
third party product or service supplier's compliance with various
laws, regulations or standards, including those related to labor,
health, safety, privacy or the environment; reputational risk
arising from third-party merchandise or service vendor performance
in direct home delivery or assembly of product for customers;
changes to statutory, regulatory and legal requirements, including
without limitation proposed changes affecting international trade;
changes to, or new, tax laws or interpretation of existing tax
laws; new, or developments in existing, litigation, claims or
assessments; changes to, or new, accounting standards; and foreign
currency exchange rate fluctuations. Except as required by law, the
Company does not undertake any obligation to update its
forward-looking statements.
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SOURCE Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.