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About ToolsGroup

Who we are

We help retailers, distributors, and manufacturers navigate uncertainty to exceed customer expectations while maximizing profitability.

Our supply chain and retail planning suites empower a new level of intelligent decision making and unlock powerful business improvements in forecast accuracy, service levels, inventory, and margins – delighting customers and achieving financial and ESG KPIs. Thanks to powerful AI solutions that leverage real-time data from across the enterprise to plan and execute at the speed of business, our customers quickly improve product availability and service levels while reducing inventory–no matter how varying their demand, elaborate their network, or complicated their operations. For companies struggling at the intersection of complexity and variability, we offer the most effective demand forecasts, the most powerful inventory optimization, and the greatest service level improvements.

Our values power our daily work

Our values of Innovation, Passion for Excellence, Collaboration, and Reliability are at the core of our culture, and help us deliver for our customers every day. We believe in integrity and keeping our commitments, and that when we collaborate we can do more. We’ve been innovators since our inception, and our team is encouraged to experiment and find solutions to our customers' most challenging planning issues.

Innovation

We were founded to find new and creative solutions to supply chain challenges and will never stop.

Passion for excellence

We care deeply about delivering the finest outcomes in everything we do.

Collaboration

We listen to understand our customers’ needs, so we can deliver the best results.

Reliability

Our customers and partners can count on us to follow through on our commitments and be there when they need us.

Innovation

We were founded to find new and creative solutions to supply chain challenges and will never stop.

Passion for excellence

We care deeply about delivering the finest outcomes in everything we do.

Collaboration

We listen to understand our customers’ needs, so we can deliver the best results.

Reliability

Our customers and partners can count on us to follow through on our commitments and be there when they need us.

Trusted by leading brands worldwide

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Digital planning delivers value right where your business needs it

99%

Product availability

20 – 50%

Reduction in inventory

10 – 30%

Less waste

40 – 90%

Reduction in planning workload

99%

Product availability

20 – 50%

Reduction in inventory

10 – 30%

Less waste

40 – 90%

Reduction in planning workload

Our ecommerce business faces an increasing SKU count and highly intermittent demand, and with shifting consumer preferences there could be a potential disruption around every corner. We partnered with ToolsGroup so that no matter what tomorrow brings, we can deliver service to customers while effectively managing our inventory.
FLYNN CHERNOS , SVP INVENTORY MANAGEMENT AND MERCHANDISE SUPPORT, GUITAR CENTER
Despite its power and level of sophistication, ToolsGroup is highly automated for an extremely low cost of ownership.
IDC

Our people are the lifeblood of our company

Our History

In 1976, Eugenio Cornacchia, a young MIT master’s graduate in Operations Management joined MIT-associated Draper Lab to work on a challenging project for Fiat’s Automotive Spare Parts Division. FIAT had unmanageable inventories and one of the lowest service levels in the European automobile industry. This needed to be fixed.

Back then inventory planning and forecasting was done using simple “deterministic” calculations based on traditional inventory theory. Eugenio had a different idea. He signed up a group of talented MIT graduates who had collaborated in the NASA Apollo space project and together they invented a new spare parts system in less than a year. It was the world’s first “stochastic” software that incorporated probability-based algorithms across an entire supply chain planning system, from forecasting to inventory optimization and replenishment.

 

Then in 1980, Cornacchia met Joseph Shamir, and the two made history.

In 1980 Eugenio joined Innovation Technology Partners (ITP) where he met the company’s COO Joseph Shamir. At ITP the two were part of a team that implemented the very first ‘factories of the future’ that paved the way for today’s global “Factory (or Industry) 4.0” movement.

 

Eugenio (Chief Scientist) and Joseph (CEO) founded ToolsGroup in 1993, commercializing the first service-driven supply chain planning and automation software, which proved to be decades ahead of its time.

Today, ToolsGroup is still finding new ways to help organizations keep up with the shifting trends and unpredictable demands of the real world.

As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to push the boundaries on what’s possible. We’re now helping companies around the world outsmart uncertainty to deliver stand-out customer experiences while maximizing profitability.

Key Milestones

  • 1993 ToolsGroup founded by Joseph Shamir and Eugenio Cornacchia
  • 1996 ToolsGroup’s first customer BP goes live with SO99+
  • 2010 ToolsGroup is first SCP vendor to integrate machine learning into a supply chain planning project for Danone Italy
  • Jan 2015 ToolsGroup tops the leaders Quadrant in Nucleus Research's Inaugural Inventory Optimization Value Matrix
  • Jan 2016 ToolsGroup moves to leaders Quadrant in Gartner 2016 Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Planning SOR
  • 2017 ToolsGroup becomes the first supply chain planning vendor to launch on the Microsoft Azure cloud
  • May 2017 ToolsGroup debuts as a visionary in Gartner Magic Quadrant for S&OP SOD
  • Sept 2017 ToolsGroup announces a major new AI supply chain planning software release optimized for the cloud
  • Sept 2018 ToolsGroup secures Accel-KKR funding to boost growth
  • 2019 ToolsGroup Named a Leader in IDC Marketscapes for Worldwide Supply Chain Inventory Optimization and Demand Planning
  • Oct 2020 Launched Supply Chain Forecast | Inventory on Microsoft Azure Marketplace
  • Nov 2021 ToolsGroup acquires Mi9 Retail Demand Management (JustEnough)
    Significant new growth investment from Accel-KKR
  • 2022 ToolsGroup Acquires Onera to Extend Retail Platform from Planning to Execution
  • 2023 ToolsGroup celebrates 30 years of supply chain innovation
  • Jan 2023 ToolsGroup launches category-defining Real-Time Retail solution
  • Feb 2023 ToolsGroup rolls out new brand identity, partnering with companies to “Navigate Uncertainty”
ABOUT OUR INVESTORS

Accel-KKR

Accel-KKR is a technology-focused investment firm with over $5 billion in capital commitments. The firm focuses on software and IT-enabled businesses well-positioned for topline and bottom-line growth. At the core of Accel-KKR’s investment strategy is a commitment to developing strong partnerships with the management teams of its portfolio companies and a focus on building value through significant resources available through the Accel-KKR network. Accel-KKR focuses on middle-market companies and provides a broad range of capital solutions including buyout capital, minority-growth investments, and credit alternatives. Accel-KKR also invests across a wide range of transaction types including private company recapitalizations, divisional carve-outs and going-private transactions. Accel-KKR is headquartered in Menlo Park with additional offices in Atlanta and London.