To address these challenges, Nexus Rental selected Peak’s AI-powered pricing and quote automation solution, which provides pricing strategies using advanced AI models. The implementation is already delivering significant value, with the Nexus team recognizing the flexibility and technical expertise of Peak’s team.

Nexus Rental had several objectives, including the upgrade of its internal data science and engineering capabilities, dependent on a single basic rental allocation model, hugely under-utilizing the power of data in fleet management. The leadership team also had to showcase its AI capabilities to investors.

According to PwC, 77% of CEOs are investing in deploying advanced technologies like AI. The shift from AI being seen as a gamble to an integral part of any business strategy is evident amongst our customers, including Marshalls and Speedy Hire, who continue to expand their use of AI across the value chain by introducing a number of new AI applications to their growing suites.

Meanwhile, the largest ever roll out of Peak’s Dynamic Inventory application continues at City Plumbing with over 900 branch colleagues soon to be using Peak daily. The appetite for AI extends to our new customers, including Batory Foods, Gibraltar Industries and Sweaty Betty.

Our long-standing partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) reached new heights, with Peak named as Finalist, Industry Partner of the Year – Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods in AWS’ Partners of the Year awards. 

In October, customers, partners and investors gathered at our new Manchester headquarters for our flagship AI conference, AltitudeX. Sponsored by Snowflake, AltitudeX saw the launch of Peak’s new generative AI product, Co:Driver, which provides users with natural language question-answer capabilities and surfaces proactive recommendations tailored to their business’ unique context. We’re looking forward to introducing Co:Driver to customers in private previews early this year.

2023 was also the year the AI regulatory conversation began to hot up, with significant advancements made in the EU, US and UK. We’ve been engaging with policymakers, industry counterparts and researchers in the UK for some time. Testament to this, Peak CEO and co-founder, Richard Potter, attended the AI for Innovation dinner as part of the coveted AI Safety Summit, jointly hosted by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and City of London Corporation.

To top it off, for the fourth year running, Peak was listed by Best Companies as one of the top 100 companies to work for. The commitment to giving back to our communities has always been an important factor for our team and this year’s Giving Back Days saw Peakers across the globe volunteer with local charity organizations, from a community garden to a plastic waste clean up group.

What’s in store for 2024?

If 2022 was the year of if you should do AI and 2023 was the year of when you should do it, we predict 2024 will be the year of how to do AI and get the most value from it. That’s why we’ve launched ‘the Ultimate Guide to AI Adoption’, which brings together almost a decade of expertise in helping businesses to get started with AI.

And whilst 2023 saw us listed as an AI company to watch by Forbes, Bloomberg and Sifted, we won’t be resting on our laurels. The next phase of Peak sees continued expansion across our regions as we strive to put AI into the hands of everyone in a business.

Peak’s AI platform is used by global industry leaders, including Nike, Molson Coors, Marshalls and Eurocell. The platform features a library of pre-built AI applications, which use machine learning and statistical algorithms to forecast trends, patterns and predictions from each user’s unique data set. Peak’s AI applications allow users to rapidly apply AI to optimize their inventories, pricing and customer personalization.

Using outputs from a user’s existing AI applications on the Peak platform, the new generative AI product allows users to ask questions about their business in natural language, such as how much stock there is in a certain location or which products are the best performers. Co:Driver continuously searches for information, efficiencies and anomalies of potential interest to the user, which is surfaced as bite-sized recommendations, with the user then able to choose their preferred next step from a number of AI-generated actions.

The combination of Peak’s AI applications and a fine-tuned LLM will help redefine the use of generative AI in business. Up to now, the typical commercial use case for generative AI has been rapid content generation, whether that be code or customer communications. Co:Driver goes beyond this, providing business teams with an interactive layer between them and their data, speeding up manual interpretation of data outputs, and highlighting critical areas of focus.

Snowflake’s data-backed report identifies the best of breed solutions used by Snowflake customers to show how marketers can leverage the Snowflake Data Cloud with accompanying partner solutions to best identify, serve, and convert valuable prospects into loyal customers. By analyzing usage patterns from a pool of approximately 8,100 customers as of April 2023, Snowflake identified technology categories that organizations consider when building their marketing data stacks.

The extensive research reflects how customers are adopting solutions from a rapidly changing ecosystem and highlights the convergence of adtech and martech, the increased importance of privacy enhancing technologies, and the heightened focus marketers have on measurement to maximize campaign Return On Investment (ROI). The categories include:

• Analytics and Data Capture
• Enrichment
• Identity and Activation
• Identity and Onboarders
• Customer Data Activation
• Advertising Platforms
• Measurement and Attribution
• Integration and Modeling
• Business Intelligence
• AI and Machine Learning
• Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Focusing on those companies that are active members of the Snowflake Partner Network (or ones with a comparable agreement in place with Snowflake), as well as Snowflake Marketplace providers, the report explores each of these categories that comprise the Modern Marketing Data Stack, highlighting technology partners and their solutions as “leaders” or “ones to watch” within each category. The report also details how current Snowflake customers leverage a number of these partner technologies to enable data-driven marketing strategies and informed business decisions.

Snowflake’s report provides a concrete overview of the partner solution providers and data providers marketers choose to create their data stacks.

Peak was identified in Snowflake’s report as a ‘one to watch’ in the AI and Machine Learning category for its Customer Intelligence AI applications. Built for marketing and customer teams, these AI applications power personalized, relevant communications to supercharge customer acquisition and retention.

Read more about how Peak and Snowflake deliver business value with your data here.

The Chief Revenue Officer position is new to Peak and reports into CEO and co-founder, Richard Potter. A critical step on the scaleup’s journey, this role is responsible for all revenue driving activities with the aim of unlocking Peak’s full commercial potential.

New Peak CRO,  Jani Asikanius

Peak’s AI platform is used by global industry leaders including Nike, Molson Coors, PepsiCo and Sika. It optimizes inventories, pricing and customer personalization for businesses of all sizes and is deployed in just weeks.

“We’re seeing the biggest technological advancement of a generation,” Jani commented.

“AI is transforming the world around us and organizations that adopt it will reap the rewards. Peak has an extensive market opportunity and there is a clear category to be built around AI platforms.

“I’ve spent a lot of time learning about Peak’s AI platform and I can confidently say that it addresses the exact pain points most businesses are suffering from on their journey to operational excellence and cost optimization. Peak unites technical and commercial users on its platform to build, deploy and manage AI applications at scale across an entire business. In a time where companies are faced with overwhelming amounts of data and economic uncertainty, investing in an AI platform is a smart move that will see them not just survive, but thrive, as we continue into the Era of Intelligence.”

Peak’s AI platform optimizes inventories, pricing and customer personalization for businesses of all sizes, deployed in weeks, not years.

Using Peak’s Customer Intelligence application suite, Shepherds Friendly will be able to personalize every touchpoint of the customer journey. With a segmented view of its customer base, Shepherds Friendly will gain predictions of future actions and preferences, such as which products best meet each member’s portfolio objectives and which communications are most valuable to each member.

Subsequently, Shepherds Friendly’s marketing team can use AI to adopt personalized strategies that enhance brand and member relationships, providing an optimized and highly relevant experience for its members.

As part of a wider drive to grow its member base, Peak’s AI will also optimize Shepherds Friendly’s member acquisition strategy.

Commercial AI is outcome focused. It requires models to be built with a business objective in mind. Sitting across an organization’s entire dataset, commercial AI is uniquely placed to optimize across the value chain. It is helping some of the world’s leading brands, including PepsiCo, Nike and Molson Coors to reduce inventory, reduce stock movements and maximize customer service.

The route to commercial AI

There are three requirements every business needs to be successful with commercial AI:

1. An AI-ready data set
2. An intelligence customized to the business built on this data
3. An interface in which line-of-business users can engage with a model

This third step is crucial. Even the most accurate and complex predictive models cannot drive value alone, they need iteration based on feedback from the commercial teams using them – a step most AI strategies are missing.

Commercial AI allows for the gradual development of a connected intelligence. This means businesses can focus on building an application to meet one objective, and later add in additional solutions that serve other teams or departments.

Driscoll’s have many core business systems that hold valuable data, they are working with the Peak team to leverage this data to enhance decision-making across multiple business functions. The initial focus of the partnership will be optimizing business critical decisions on customer stock allocation. This will help the Driscoll’s team to maximize customer service, minimize waste, reduce food miles and cut out hours of manual data manipulation.

How is commercial AI being leveraged in agriculture?

While this is the first application of commercial AI to the fresh produce sector, the technology is already being leveraged successfully within agriculture. Machinery manufacturer Fotenix uses machine learning enabled cameras to monitor crop health, utilizing Peak’s AI platform to assess images of plants at scale.

The Fotenix system analyzes numerous data sources, among them historical images of diseased crops, to determine the needs of individual plants and anticipate crop issues in real time, providing actionable decisions for farmers to take. The company utilizes AI across a range of use cases.

For one soft fruit producer in the UK, its solution resulted in a 20% reduction in cost per hectare and a 10% total increase in crop yields. If deployed at scale, these solutions could help to address food insecurity by enabling farmers to grow more food more efficiently; using fewer resources to feed more.

Peak’s solution for Driscoll’s is powered by AWS

Peak’s software platform enables companies to embed AI into the core of their decision making and operations. This commercial application of AI to optimize business performance is known as Decision Intelligence; enabling companies to boost operational efficiency, grow revenues and profits. It is set to be the most important enterprise software category of the next decade.

By making AI accessible to more businesses, Peak has seen strong demand for its Decision Intelligence platform over the past 12 months, with revenues more than doubling thanks to new customer wins in Europe, the USA, Middle East and India. With Peak, businesses are empowered to make great decisions with the help of AI across their sales, marketing, demand management, and supply chains, regardless of their AI maturity and capability.

Peak’s platform is used by retailers, CPG, direct-to-consumer and manufacturing businesses to drive transformational results, including examples such as a 5% increase in total company revenues, a doubling of return on advertising spend, a 12% reduction in inventory holdings and a 5% reduction in supply chain costs. These gains are adding millions to the top and bottom line of these companies. Customers include Nike, PepsiCo, KFC, PrettyLittleThing, Superdry and CJ Group.

This latest funding will fuel an ambitious global expansion, with new offices opening in both the USA and India, as well as increasing R&D investment in Peak’s Decision Intelligence software. As a result, Peak is planning to create more than 200 new jobs globally in the coming year.

About Peak

Peak is the pioneer of a new category of enterprise software, Decision Intelligence; the commercial application of AI to optimize business performance. Decision Intelligence allows companies to fulfill their potential, grow revenues and profits. Peak’s platform is used by leading brands across industries such as retail, CPG, direct-to-consumer, construction, and manufacturing.  Peak’s customers include Nike, PepsiCo, KFC, PrettyLittleThing, Superdry and CJ Group. 

Peak has been named a Gartner ‘Cool Vendor’ for AI in retail, and was also named in The 10 Best Technology Companies to Work for 2021 with the Best Companies 3-star ‘World Class’ accreditation, which recognises extraordinary levels of employee engagement. Peak is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Retail Competency Partner and Machine Learning Competency Partner, and is ISO 27001 accredited.

*As of the date of this press release, SoftBank Group Corp. has made capital contributions to allow investments by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (“SVF 2”) in certain portfolio companies. The information included herein is made for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy limited partnership interests in any fund, including SVF 2. SVF 2 has yet to have an external close, and any potential third-party investors shall receive additional information related to any SVF 2 investments prior to closing.

The Modern Milkman will use Peak’s Decision Intelligence platform to ensure that the right products are in stock in its localized grocery hubs to meet customer demands and increase operational excellence. Decision Intelligence combines shelf-life figures, customer orders, supply and warehouse data – and analyzes the data to make predictions instantly to ensure customers receive the right product at the right time. The project is accelerated by Peak’s Data Bridge connecting to The Modern Milkman’s data in Snowflake.

Peak CEO, Richard Potter, expressed his delight that The Modern Milkman would be using Peak’s Decision Intelligence platform by adding, “AI will enable The Modern Milkman to make consistently great decisions, faster and more accurately than ever before. Our Decision Intelligence platform will be central to that and we’re delighted that The Modern Milkman has selected Peak to enable this during an accelerated period of growth for their business.”

Leaders from a wide spectrum of UK construction businesses have stepped up to drive carbon out of the industry.

Today the Construction Leadership Council confirms a stellar line up of businesses including major contractors and global consultants, top manufacturers and products firms, as well as specialist distributors and quantity surveyors that have committed to share their experience as they plan to hit Net Zero. 

12 organizations are confirmed today as a new wave of CO2nstructZero Business Champions. They will work alongside the CLC and other major industry bodies to share innovations and best practice, acting as promotors and role models to support the industry’s move to Net Zero Carbon. The 12 organizations are: 

• Adair    
• Atkins  
• Cast     
• CEF     
• Costain            
• Faithful + Gould            
• Ibstock Plc      
• Imtech
• IStructE           
• Knights Brown
• Peak
• Wavin

CO2nstructZero is the Construction Leadership Council’s campaign to bring the whole sector together in a joint effort to meet the UK’s Net Zero ambitions.

As Business Champions, each organization has made a commitment that they will share tangible evidence of their net zero carbon plans against the nine CO2nstructZero priorities, contribute to the CO2nstructZero industry reporting process and work together to support companies in the sector to develop their own plans.

About the Construction Leadership Council (CLC)

The CLC’s mission is to provide sector leadership to the construction industry. The expanded CLC has twelve workstreams that operate collaboratively to address the biggest issues facing the sector, focused on the Industry Recovery Plan. 

Workstreams include skills and inclusion, building safety and business models. The CLC is co-chaired by Ann-Marie Trevelyan MP, Minister for Business and Industry, and Andy Mitchell CBE, CEO of Thames Tideway.

About Peak

Peak, a BMF service member, helps merchants and manufacturers to drive improved business performance using Decision Intelligence. Peak’s Decision Intelligence software embeds AI in vehicle routing technology, ensuring that delivery vehicles are more productive and travel fewer miles. Customers have seen transformational efficiency gains at speed and scale, including an 8% reduction on miles travelled per job and an increase of 23% capacity, in just three months. AI-driven demand forecasting informs both production scheduling and sourcing optimisation to reduce waste. Over a year, another company making aluminium products reduced transportation costs by 8% and eliminated 400 metric tonnes of waste. As BMF Business Champions, Peak will engage companies on the sustainable and long term benefits that Decision Intelligence can deliver.

For the second year running, Peak gained a 3-Star accreditation for the highest standard of workplace engagement, representing companies that truly excel and offer ‘world class’ levels of workplace engagement. 

The Best Companies survey uses an anonymous poll to capture the views of staff at more than a thousand companies across the country, ranking firms on various factors such as leadership, wellbeing and pay.

Peak’s Decision Intelligence software embeds AI across sales, marketing, planning and supply chains to transform decision making and accelerate revenues, profits and sustainability.

Peak has seen rapid growth over the past 12 months with revenues doubling (+99%) thanks to new customer wins in Europe, the USA, Middle East and India. The company’s international customers include KFC, PepsiCo Inc. and JSW Cement. 

With ambitious global expansion plans to meet strong demand, Peak is opening offices in the USA and Pune (India), alongside expanding its Jaipur (India) and UK team. As a result, Peak is creating 150 new jobs globally this year.

Peak has been named among the top 40 retail tech start-ups operating globally in Retail Week World Retail Congress’ (RWRC) second annual Discovery report, published today.

Most retailers know they need to work with tech start-ups to give them a competitive edge – it is understanding which firms are going to truly add value that is the challenge. Judged by an a panel of retail and start-up experts*, the Discovery report tells retailers all they need to know.

Virtual try-on assistants, vertical farming, ‘save now, buy later’ payments, in-store marketing robots and bookable shop space are just a handful of fresh-thinking players featured.

And it is this fresh thinking that is required if retailers and brands are to remain competitive and balance bottom lines with customer expectations as disruption from the pandemic persists.

Drawing on case studies from Discovery, the ROI from retailer-start-up partnerships is clear:

• M&S has trialled a partnership with instant virtual try-on start-up Texel to drive purchasing intent; customers that use the tool are five times more likely to purchase and 30% less likely to return items
• Samsung has benefited from a 20% increase in basket revenue and 28% uplift in items per basket from working with AI-powered product bundling start-up Increasingly
• Carrefour UAE is using Simbe Robotics’ inventory robots Tally to monitor all-important inventory availability and has now expanded this to 12 of its stores
• Lidl has used ParcelLab’s automated personalised shipping message service to engage 85% of customers receiving shopping emails to return to its website

Featuring solutions from supply chain and store innovations to personalisation, AI, data and marketing, the report looks at how retailers have benefited from adapting their businesses – and their thinking – to lean into a whole new set of disruptions, trends and challenges.

The start-ups operate across all parts of the world, from Europe and the US to Singapore and Israel, and have worked with more than 30 retailers and brands including Tesco, M&S, Nespresso, Asos, Carrefour, Samsung, Depop,  AO.com and John Lewis Partners.

Ian Shepherd has been one of the Discovery judges for the past two years. Shepherd is non-executive director at Bensons for Beds, former CEO at retailer Game, author of The Average is Always Wrong and runs the consultancy Moving Tribes where he advises retailers, digital start-ups and consumer businesses.

With more than 15m people visiting KFC every year, across 960 plus restaurants in the UK and Ireland, improving the guest experience is a key business objective.

Leveraging rich data sources from across the business will help build a holistic, predictive view of each item, enabling KFC to make faster, more consistent decisions, supported by data. 

PRESS RELEASE:

Tech Nation, the leading growth platform for UK tech companies, in celebration of UK Fintech Week, today announces the latest 22 companies joining the Future Fifty programme, including 3 high-growth scaleups founded and based in the North West; AI scaleup Peak, retail tech company Sorted and healthtech company Push Doctor.

Future Fifty is Europe’s leading late-stage growth programme, designed to bring together, empower and accelerate the growth of the most successful tech companies in the UK. Programme alumni include Monzo, Starling Bank, Darktrace, among others. 131 companies have taken part in the programme since its inception, collectively raising $11bn, with 9 companies going on to IPO.

The acceptance of 3 Manchester-based scaleups into the exclusive programme reflects findings from the Tech Nation Report 2021, the UK’s leading annual report on the state of tech, around the exponential growth of tech in the UK’s North West. According to the report, Manchester is currently the UK’s seventh biggest tech hub, raising £58mn in VC investment last year. The North West region as a whole is currently home to 5 unicorns (companies with a valuation of over £1bn), with 6 futurecorns (high-growth companies valued between $250m and $800m) created last year.

Notably, Peak, Sorted and Push Doctor are three companies who have been innovating and helping people and businesses throughout the pandemic.

• Push Doctor has worked to support the NHS with its private video consultation service, which allows patients to have video calls with their GPs, rather than attending in-person appointments, and makes doctors’ notes available to the patient’s local GP surgery.

• As shops across the UK closed down under lockdown restrictions, the UK also saw a surge in online retail and distribution. To help businesses keep up, logistics platform Sorted helped companies such as Mindful Chef and Mountain Warehouse to meet new customer demands. During the last quarter of 2020, Sorted saw a 1715.65% increase in shipment volume through the platform, compared to the same quarter in 2019.

• Peak’s Decision Intelligence software powers great commercial decision making by embedding AI across sales, marketing, planning and supply chains to accelerate revenues and profits. Peak’s customer base includes PrettyLittleThing, KFC, PepsiCo, Marshalls and Speedy Hire.   Peak has seen rapid growth over the last 12 months, with revenue doubling and new customer wins in Europe, the USA, Middle East and India. In February 2021, Peak closed its $21M Series B funding round led by London-based venture capital firm Oxx.

About the 3 North West companies joining this year’s Future Fifty cohort:

Peak

Decision Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence | Founded in Manchester in 2014 | Series B | 180 employees

Peak is helping the world’s smartest companies put the power of AI at the centre of all commercial decision making. With Decision Intelligence, a brand new category of AI-driven software and services, they’re helping their clients unlock the value of their data and start bringing certainty to their decision making, powered by AI.

Sorted

Retail tech | Founded in Manchester in 2014 | Series B | 114 employees 

Sorted is a global SaaS company, giving retailers full control of delivery management – whether that’s optimising checkout delivery options, enhancing carrier management in the warehouse or providing market-leading post-purchase CX. Their software is live in 19 countries around the world, and offers access to a carrier library of 1000+ services.

Push Doctor

Healthtech | Founded in Manchester in 2013 | Series C | 75 employees 

Empowering people to engage with their health on their terms, Push Doctor works in partnership with NHS practices, PCNs and CCGs across the country. It provides the platform and technology to allow safe and secure video consultations with NHS GPs, empowers patients and clinicians to leverage the benefits of a digital solution, and fully integrates with NHS clinical systems to ensure continuity of patient safety and care.

David Grimes, Founder & CEO of Sorted, commented: “I’m so excited to get started with the Tech Nation Future Fifty programme to support our plans for growth. We’ve built something that we’re incredibly proud of, and the recognition as one of the UK’s most successful digital businesses is a huge achievement and testament to our platform. It’s come at a great time in our journey – as we’re supporting global retailers to keep up with online demand and improve the delivery experience for their customers, which is especially important during pandemic and Brexit uncertainty.” Said Grimes: “The programme gives us an amazing opportunity to join forces with other tech leaders, and be part of a network of experts to develop our team with the Future Fifty community. It’s never been more important to pool knowledge from peers and validate the challenges we’re facing, to support other exciting UK tech businesses and pave the way forward for Sorted.”

Eren Ozagir, Co-founder of Push Doctor, said: “We are proud and excited to be joining the Future Fifty 9.0 cohort. We’ve seen huge changes in the digital health landscape over the last year in response to Covid-19, as well as significant challenges in our sector. Joining the programme will give us access to valuable expertise and guidance as we continue to scale Push Doctor’s digital services and provide better support and outcomes for clinicians and patients. This will help us reach our overall goal of making health systems more sustainable and joined up for the long-term. We can’t wait to start our journey with Tech Nation and hope to go from strength to strength, as a partner of the NHS.”

Peak’s inaugural Decision Intelligence Report 2021 set out to provide UK businesses with a clearer and deeper understanding of the factors that affect decision making at senior levels and identify areas for improvement. The report surveyed 500 participants sitting in both C-suite executive and founding roles in business across the UK, ranging from SMEs to companies turning over more than £25 million annually. 

The report also found almost two-thirds of C-suite executives (64%) admitting that decision making is now more complicated than ever before, with around half (49%) disclosing that decision making takes too long within their company and that they had recently delayed making a big business decision until it was too late. 54% also revealed they regret having made a major business decision. 

When asked to identify some of the root causes of decision paralysis in their businesses, 60% of the participants pointed to outdated processes and operations that needed to be unlearned or overhauled. 

Richard Potter, co-founder and CEO at Peak, commented on the findings:

 Other key findings from Peak’s Decision Intelligence Report 2021 include:

• Adapting to change: Most (67%) of UK business leaders are starting to adapt to the ever-changing world of work and admit to having evolved their decision making process in the last five years.
• Death by bureaucracy: 57% of C-suite executives say ‘real change in their business is stifled by red tape’.
• The future is intelligent: Three-quarters (73%) of C-suite execs say developments in AI will be part of the most important innovations in the next 50 years.

? Download your copy of the Decision Intelligence Report 2021 to see more stats ?

Vanessa, Data Scientist

“My superpower is having the kind of energy that keeps myself and others positive all the way through the day. Peak helps me do this by creating an open and honest environment, and I have team members around me that keep me positive and keep me smiling through the worst of times. I don’t know if I could keep this kind of energy up without Peak!”

Amy, Data Science Team Leader

“My superpower is being proactive. As a manager, I’m proactive in understanding what motivates my team, getting stuff done and putting forward ideas for improvement. Peak is such a great place to be proactive because the fast pace at which we move means there’s always opportunities to get stuck in and improve the way that we do things.”

Bethany, Chief Operating Officer

“The first superpower I have is I’m great at growing and scaling SaaS businesses. While I’ve been at Peak we’ve actually quadrupled in size and that’s just over two years. My second power is being really open and vulnerable with my teams, and by doing that it creates an environment of psychological safety where everybody can be open and vulnerable and achieve the best that they can be. I’m really proud of both of those!”

Holly, AI Consultant

“There are two key things that Peak helps me be my best. The first is the support, there’s amazing support for my day-to-day, for progression, around wellbeing that I love. The second is the open culture; I feel like I can be really open with, and trust and be vulnerable with, the people around me and management. Those two things are really key to me being my best at Peak!”

Sorcha, Data Science Team Leader

“My superpower is that I work well with different groups of people, and I’m also able to strike balance between getting the job done but also having a fun and enjoyable environment to work in. Peak helps me to achieve this because, in my role as a team lead, I get to work with lots of different people and lots of different teams every day.”

Claire, Head of People

“Peak gives me the opportunity to think big and think differently about how we can best support our teams, and continually enhance our amazing company culture. Peak is invested in my personal development, too, and really cares about me having the right balance between having an amazing career at Peak but also being a mum to an amazing three-year-old son!”

About International Women’s Day

International Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women’s achievements or rally for women’s equality.

Find out more about this year’s celebrations and the 2021 #ChooseToChallenge theme by visiting the IWD website here
? See how Peak can help you unleash your superpower to its full potential – browse our current careers opportunities here

AI adoption in businesses saw a rapid acceleration in 2020 as companies looked for new ways to boost sales and maximize profits. This is especially true for the many firms prioritizing digital transformation in the wake of evolving consumer demands, the continued e-commerce boom and the global pandemic. 

Peak’s software enables companies across sectors including retail, consumer goods and manufacturing to embed AI into the core of their decision making and operations. This commercial application of AI to optimize business performance is something Peak calls Decision Intelligence. Peak has seen rapid growth over the past 12 months with revenues doubling thanks to new customer wins in Europe, the USA, Middle East, and India. 

Peak’s Decision Intelligence software allows a broader range of companies to access these supercharged technologies that were previously only accessible to a select few, such as tech giants Google, Amazon and Netflix. With Peak, businesses of all sizes are empowered to make great decisions with the help of AI across their sales, marketing, demand management, and supply chains. 

With a mission to enable businesses to do great things with their data, Peak’s customers have seen transformational results, including examples such as a 5% increase in total company revenues, a doubling of return on advertising spend, a 12% reduction in inventory holdings, and a 5% reduction in supply chain costs. These gains are adding millions to the top and bottom line of companies using Peak’s Decision Intelligence software. 

This latest funding will fuel an ambitious global expansion to meet strong demand, with new offices opening in both the USA and India, as well as continued R&D investment in Peak’s Decision Intelligence software. As a result, Peak is planning to create 130 new jobs globally in the coming year. As part of the round, Oxx’s Richard Anton also joins the board. 

Richard Potter, co-founder and CEO at Peak: 

“It’s becoming impossible to run a business without AI. Modern businesses are complex and operate in an ever-changing world. Making critical decisions without AI would be like driving a Formula 1 car while wearing a blindfold. 

AI enables businesses to make consistently great decisions, faster and more accurately than ever before. Yet until recently this power was only in the hands of a select few. Our software empowers day-to-day decision makers across businesses, and we’re proud to be working with household names such as PrettyLittleThing, KFC, and PepsiCo, and other industry leaders like Marshalls and Speedy Hire. 

We’re delighted to have secured this new funding in an oversubscribed round. The financing and Oxx’s support will further catalyse our growth and expansion plans, and will help us empower many more businesses worldwide with Decision Intelligence over the coming years.” 

Richard Anton, General Partner at Oxx: 

“Richard and the excellent Peak team have a compelling vision to optimize entire businesses through Decision Intelligence and they’re delivering real-world benefits to a raft of household name customers already. The pandemic has meant digitization is no longer a choice; it’s a requirement. Peak has made it easier for businesses to get started and see rapid results from AI-enabled decision making. We are delighted to support Peak on their way to becoming the category-defining global leader in Decision Intelligence.” 

Ollie Richards, Partner at MMC Ventures: 

“The opportunity for Peak to lead the Decision Intelligence category cannot be overstated. It has been a privilege to support the team and work with Richard over the last few years, and the company continues to generate impressive growth metrics, fantastic customer adoption while building out a world-class team.”

For those unaware, what is ISO 27001 certification?

ISO 27001 is an internationally-recognized standard for managing information security. It centers around ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information, and provides a set of controls that can be applied in order to ensure information assets – including customer data – are protected at all times. The focus is wider than just technical controls, though, and includes all policies, processes, procedures, and tools in relation to how information is processed.

Fun fact: ISO is actually derived from the greek word ‘isos,’ meaning equal, rather than being an acronym. There are a number of other ISO standards covering different areas of quality and compliance for organizations.

Why is it important for Peak to be ISO 27001-certified?

The protection of our customers’ data is our number one priority. We are trusted to process information, and certifications like ISO 27001 provide assurance that we take information security very seriously. 

We have designed all of our products and processes with security at their core, but going through the certification process for ISO 27001 has given us the validation and confidence that we are compliant with internationally-recognized standards.

ISO 27001 certification will also help us on our scale journey, as it’s an important prerequisite for some businesses as part of procurement and onboarding processes.

What did Peak have to do/demonstrate to achieve this?

This was a genuine team effort, and involved everyone in the entire business! We initially completed a full review of our processes, procedures, and policies against the requirements of the standard, to understand any areas we needed to strengthen during the preparation process. 

It was then a case of building an Information Security Management System (ISMS) for Peak – putting in place the right mechanisms to ensure we continually review and improve our information security. Our approach was to identify all of the things we wanted to protect (information assets), identify risks around these, and then apply controls from the ISO 27001 standard to mitigate these risks. Once we had completed this exercise, we commenced the two-stage certification process.

The first stage was a document review, which involved an external auditor reviewing all of our processes, policies, and procedures to confirm they were fit for purpose. This was then followed by a more in-depth stage two audit, where an auditor spent five days with us to review our compliance with the standard – across all of our teams, and across all locations. 

I’m very pleased to say that we got a great write-up, which is true testament to the continued hard work of the entire team at Peak, and their appreciation of the importance of information security across the board.  

What does it mean for our customers? Are there any changes they need to be aware of?

There are no changes for our customers – other than further reassurance that their data is protected when working with Peak. We will be independently audited on an annual basis against the standard, and will also complete a programme of internal audits through the year to ensure we remain compliant.

In order to maintain certification, we need to be constantly evaluating our performance against our information security objectives, and continually making improvements to our systems, processes, tools, and products.  We are also exploring other information security standards and accreditations, and are embarking on our SOC 2 audit process this year, in order to support our expansion in territories such as the United States.

Do you have any advice for other companies looking to gain ISO 27001 certification?

ISO 27001 is a big undertaking and shouldn’t be underestimated! Up to 114 controls may need to be applied, depending on your scope of certification, in addition to the core processes that need to be in place to meet the requirements of the standard. From start to finish, it took us around six months to achieve the certification – and that is considered relatively fast.

Making sure you keep people engaged throughout the process is key. We provided weekly updates to the whole company on the progress against our plan, and had champions from each team who were more deeply involved in getting us ready for certification. The standard does involve absolutely everyone in a business, and we held a number of education and training sessions about ISO 27001, and information security in general, throughout the process.

Ensuring that you’ve got good buy-in from your leadership team before starting is also essential. We had weekly catch-ups during the implementation phase, in order to make sure things were on track and we had enough resource allocated. Now, we also have monthly information security meetings where we review progress against the continued objectives that we set ourselves.

When defining our new policy, there were three core values that we wanted to have at the center of it:

• Support new life and families. We wanted our team to be able to start and grow their families at Peak, so our policies must offer sufficient support for families
• Attract more talent. We have ambitious growth plans and goals for diversity in the team, so it’s important to us to have policies in place that allow this to happen
• Encourage people to stay. The team we’re building is irreplaceable, and we want to people to stay at Peak. Our policies need to ensure people feel valued

With all of this in mind, we’re very excited to announce our new policy, which provides support for current and future employees across all of our offices.

Please note that SMP refers to Statutory Maternity Pay, which – as of December 2020 – is £151.20 per week.

Using the policy for the first time at Peak

• Less than nine months since joining Peak
  • Six weeks at 90% pay + 33 weeks at equivalent of SMP
• After nine months since joining Peak
  • 20 full weeks’ pay + 19 weeks at SMP
• After three years since joining Peak
  • 26 full weeks’ pay + 13 weeks at SMP

Using the policy for a subsequent time with one year at Peak

• Less than nine months back at Peak
  • Six weeks at 90% pay + 33 weeks at SMP
• After nine months back at Peak
  • 20 full weeks’ pay + 19 weeks at SMP
• After two years back at Peak
  • 26 full weeks’ pay + 13 weeks at SMP

As well as the enhanced maternity pay, members of the team using the policy will also receive their usual benefits, including company share options.

We want to make sure that the support we offer our team doesn’t just end when their maternity leave concludes. Therefore, we will also…

• Ensure you can return to your role. We don’t want you to worry about what your role will look like when you return, so we’ll work with you to ensure your role is as similar as possible
• Support part-time work. We understand that caring for your family does not end after maternity leave, so we’ll help you switch to a part-time role if this is a change you’d like to make
• Guarantee your career progression. We will ensure that you progress at the same rate as those in similar roles, and work with you to build a a clear career plan

There’s much more to come!

Peak’s new maternity leave policy marks the start of an overhaul of all our parental leave policies. Our Inclusion & Diversity committee continues to work on the ways we can make Peak a more diverse place to work – ensuring that, as we continue to grow, the diversity of our team grows alongside that.