The Forecourt as a Food Destination
bp is one of the world’s leading integrated energy companies, with a growing global mobility and convenience retail network. bp’s mobility & convenience business spans over 300 company – owned UK forecourt sites, offering fuel and convenience via Wild Bean Cafe and M&S Simply Food, with some sites offering EV charging via bp pulse.
The importance and impact of convenience to bp’s customers makes product availability a clear priority. More than half of customers visiting bp’s UK retail sites now come on a food-only mission, rather than for fuel only. With EV charging extending customer dwell time and increasing the propensity to purchase food and drink, the quality of the retail experience is central to its competitive position. This makes product availability and the supply chain that supports it, a direct driver of commercial performance.
Like many forecourt operators, bp wants to maintain strong on-shelf availability while minimizing excess supply, both at store level and its distribution center (DC) network. Before implementing RELEX, bp’s replenishment process relied on legacy systems that lacked the ability to connect store-level demand with DC planning. The result was a system that generated excess stock in some product areas but gaps on shelves in other areas, resulting in lost sales.
A Unified Platform for An Integrated Supply Chain
bp selected RELEX in 2023, a decision shaped by RELEX’s proven retail-sector depth and the strength of its existing customer base. Also key to bp’s selection was RELEX’s ability to connect store and DC planning in a single system, replacing the disconnected processes. Equally important to bp was the cultural fit, with a can-do, collaborative mindset and a commitment to continuous product development that gave bp confidence in the long-term investment case.
The implementation was delivered by a three-party project team comprising bp, system integrator Infosys, and RELEX. The platform went live across bp’s UK convenience network in May 2025, bringing together demand forecasting, replenishment, and inventory optimization in a single unified platform.
bp now has end-to-end visibility of its supply chain, from supplier inbound performance through to store-level availability. This enabled bp to move from reactive stock management, where teams are responding to problems after they arise, to a data-driven, automated approach that anticipates and prevents them.
Delivering Availability, Efficiency and Operational Intelligence
RELEX has delivered meaningful improvements for bp across key supply chain metrics. Store availability improved by approximately 2% versus the pre-go-live baseline, reducing lost sales and improving customer experience in bp’s convenience stores chain-wide. At the same time, store inventory levels fell by 14%, freeing up significant working capital and reducing the operational burden of managing excess stock in space-constrained forecourt environments.
The DC stock availability also improved by more than 1%, ensuring stores could be replenished reliably and consistently, a critical foundation for sustained store-level service performance. DC inventory also fell by 13% without affecting service levels, reflecting leaner, more responsive replenishment and reduced buffer stock requirements across the network.
The transformation of bp’s operational planning relationship with its logistics partner was also significant. Prior to working with RELEX, bp provided its logistics partner with a manually calculated forecast to inform labor planning. Working with RELEX, bp now provides its logistics partner with demand forecasts that are consistently within +/-5%. This forecast accuracy improvement translates directly into more precise activity and labor planning, which supports cost reduction.
“RELEX is a great product designed for retail, with class-leading capabilities, including AI and machine learning functionality that has been beneficial for our business,” said Steve Wilson, European Supply Chain Optimization Director, bp Mobility & Convenience, Europe. “The solution has fundamentally changed how we manage our supply chain. We have moved from a fragmented, reactive approach to a fully connected, data-driven model that improves product availability while reducing inventory and waste. We also have a higher level of confidence in our forecasts, which enables better labour planning and cost control with our logistics partner.”
Beyond the metrics, RELEX has changed how bp’s supply team spends their time. Analysts who previously operated reactively, responding to store queries and following task-based workflows, now manage end-to-end supply chain performance for their product categories. With visibility from supplier inbound performance all the way through to store-level availability, inventory and waste, the team is focused on understanding root causes and driving systematic improvements, rather than focusing on individual issues. With benefits now being delivered, bp is focused on improving the gains achieved and realizing more benefits from a fully connected supply chain.