The Board and bdg Partnership

Hi, I'm Tom Owen. I'm the UK Managing Director of bdg.

We have been a Board partner for 20 years.

I personally have been working with Board for around 10 years.

We're a Board partner across Europe, so very

heavily involved in the DACH market and also the UK market, but

also more recently started to be active in some of the other countries like

the Nordics. We have

partnered with Board for 20 years, but we like to have certain

specialisms in some industries. So we are very heavily involved

in retail, but also energy and

housing, and obviously we do a lot of finance and FP&A projects.

We're incredibly collaborative.

I think the things that I love about Board is that they have

invested in retail as much as we have.

So they have hired people who understand retail, have worked in retail.

So when you are talking to a retailer, it's super important that you can understand

their language. You know what a WSSI is. You know what MFP stands for.

You understand the acronyms, the buzzwords, but also that you

understand how their businesses are unique and the differences that they might have

to other industries. And I think that collaboration and Board having that

expertise and us having that expertise really makes customers and

prospects feel super comfortable,

which has led to a lot of success. One of the things that I'm most proud

about is our development of a community in this space.

For me, the value add has two sides. One is technical.

So the software is brilliant. The software answers a lot of challenges.

There's a big sort of technical ability that allows us to do great things,

again, particularly in retail space, for example, the ability to deal

with lots of SKUs, detailed plans with

lots of technical challenges that come with those things.

But also from a more human angle, we've really focused on developing a

community. So whether it's the Board-led

initiatives or whether it's the BDG Retail, we're really getting together

customers, building a community, having customers talk to each other, both

about technical software challenges, but also external challenges, whether it's

the growth of AI, whether it's

talent shortages in the industry, et cetera.

We have these community events where customers get, again, additional

value from being a Board | bdg customer.

It's not just about the software, but it's also about being part of that community.

So another way in which the bdg and Board collaboration has

been super successful is around the Board Solutions.

And again, particularly within the retail space, we've been quite active in

supporting Board, and Board have invested heavily

themselves in producing assets that have drastically sped

up the implementation timelines.

So we have multiple customers with proof points of

implementing MFP, WSSI, for example, in three months, which is

very fast in terms of a market perspective.

But also incredibly speeds up the time to

value. And we also see customers implementing quickly, using

the solution for a couple of months, but then being able to adapt and change from

there, which is a huge competitive advantage for everybody involved.

The thing that most excites me about this partnership, I should say there's

probably three areas. So the first area would be the Agentic AI

that we're seeing. I think it's great that the agents have sort of

personas and domain-based expertise. I think that's super important.

So particularly the Merchandising Agent, I'm really excited for all of our retail

customers. And then from a second perspective, I'm really excited to further

develop our community, and we're developing a lot of things to sort of strengthen

that and expand it, so that we can have even more customers take part

in that, so it's not restricted to a location or being to London

centric. And then lastly, in terms of expansion, I think that we've done a

great job in the DACH and UK markets.

So there's a lot of retailers around the rest of Europe or the rest of the world

that I think that we can bring a lot of these values to in terms of incredibly

fast implementation, better decisions, and that retail

expertise I think will be super exciting to take to more

places. I recently had a quote from a customer that we've

just started working with. The very first demo, they said, "This is the greatest

piece of merchandising software we've ever seen." So to get feelings like that

from brand new customers means that I know we're on the right track, and we're

just super keen to get that to more and more people so that they can

make better decisions.