Marks & Spencer has partnered with digital skills training company Decoded to create the world’s first data academy in retail.

This will take colleagues from every function - from store managers and visual merchandisers to finance and buying - and improve their data skills to help lead digital transformation across the business.

The company’s senior team will embark on a data leadership programme, enabling them to get hands-on with technology, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

M&S colleagues will also have the opportunity to enrol on a data fellowship, an 18 month in-work data science skills programme, where they will learn to harness the most cutting-edge data analytics tools such as R and Python and adopt technologies such as machine learning. Those who finish the programme will get a data analytics qualification accredited by the British Computing Society.

The fellowship is fully funded by the Apprenticeship Levy, the billion pound fund created by the government to help upskill the UK workforce to be ready for the Future of Work.

M&S chief executive Steve Rowe called it the biggest digital investment to date, helping to upskill colleagues and provide them with an in-depth level of digital literacy.

“Transformation of our business is key to survival and a huge part of this lies with our colleagues,” he stated. “We need to change their digital behaviours, mindsets and our culture to make the business fit for the digital age and our partnership with Decoded will enable us to do this.”

Last month, M&S signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft, with a view to “transform the retail experience using the power of artificial intelligence” via the M&S Retail Labs team.

The digital transformation plan comes as part of a commitment to take at least a third of its sales online, which means more than 100 stores will be closed by 2022.

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