ToolsGroup Acquires Onera to Extend Retail Platform from Planning to Execution

BOSTON—June 7, 2022—ToolsGroup, a global leader in supply chain planning and optimization software, today announced its acquisition of Onera, a provider of real-time inventory availability and fulfillment software solutions to retailers. The combined software offering gives retailers crucial visibility into inventory as well as the sophistication needed to optimize planning and fulfillment to enable a flexible and resilient supply chain.   

COVID-induced shifts in consumer shopping preferences, the prolonged shipping crisis, geopolitical upheaval, and inflation have driven retailers to evolve demand and fulfillment strategies. Consequently, the complexity of managing inventory across channels and locations has escalated, leading to negative customer experiences, higher costs, and redundant inventory and planning systems. 

San Francisco-based Onera provides retail technology that connects inventory across siloed systems and transforms them into a single, real-time source of inventory truth. It enables real-time inventory availability by tracking inventory across the supply chain and intelligently exposing inventory to any channel. In addition, Onera allows retailers to optimize omnichannel fulfillment by leveraging advanced machine learning to best determine where to fulfill an order. This added visibility and automation gives retailers the agility and flexibility to guarantee high customer service and achieve optimal, profitable fulfillment.

ToolsGroup will add Onera’s inventory availability and fulfillment solutions to its retail planning suite. The Onera acquisition comes on the heels of ToolsGroup’s acquisition of Mi9 Retail’s Demand Management business (formerly JustEnough Software), and further extends ToolsGroup’s functional reach in retail from planning to execution. 

Leveraging AI to help retailers, manufacturers, and distributors build intelligent supply chains continues to drive ToolsGroup’s product strategy. Supply chains that are flexible, and able to rapidly react to external disruptions are the most resilient and best suited to create best-in-class experiences.

“Amid today’s demand and supply crises, retailers need flexible and resilient supply chains to keep customer satisfaction high and minimize costs,” said ToolsGroup CEO Inna Kuznetsova. “Onera is an excellent complement to ToolsGroup’s strong retail and supply chain planning capabilities, and we are delighted to welcome this innovative team as part of our company.”

“Onera is excited to join the ToolsGroup team to accelerate our vision of end-to-end supply chain visibility and intelligence,” said Sahil Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Onera. “Real-time inventory visibility provides the agility and flexibility needed to create the seamless omnichannel experience that today’s customers crave. Together, we can leverage this visibility to optimize and automate the entire supply chain—from planning to execution.”

Onera, backed by Bain Capital Ventures and Founder’s Collective, was founded under the premise that as commerce evolved, so too would the supply chain. The company set out to build a platform, like Amazon, that used data, real-time systems and machine learning to enable this transformation. The eight-year old startup currently works with prominent retailers, such as Gap, rue21, Old Navy, TORRID and Zumiez to enable a best-in-class omnichannel experience.