As you may have already noticed from recent order volumes, we experienced an IT issue overnight on Saturday which affected order generation for Sunday. As a result, Sunday’s orders were significantly lower than usual, by an average of 23.6%.

The issue was caused by a failure in the sales feed from our store systems into SAP. With sales missing, book stocks appeared artificially high, leading SAP to reduce order quantities. The root cause was resolved overnight and fully fixed by 6am on Sunday; however, this was too late for Sunday’s order generation. While an order regeneration was considered, this would have delayed orders reaching you until after midday on Sunday, so we felt it was less disruptive to proceed as is.

Once the issue was corrected, SAP recalculated requirements and increased ordering to rebalance store stock levels. This resulted in higher-than-usual orders on Monday, averaging 21.6% above a normal Monday. From Monday onwards, this uplift will also be reflected in our forecasts over the coming days. Our depots are prioritising fresh volumes to return stores to normal levels as quickly as possible.

We appreciate that this unexpected change may have caused disruption to your production and planning. If there is any impact on shorter shelf life over the coming days, please liaise with your usual Supply Chain contacts so we can work together to mitigate this.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused, and thank you for your understanding.