Academy Sports and Outdoors (NASDAQ:ASO) reported $1.36 billion in revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2024, reflecting a 1.4% year-over-year decline. Comparable sales dropped 5.7% as the company navigated pressure in footwear and apparel categories. Despite top-line softness, net income reached $96 million with adjusted EPS of $1.08, driven by disciplined expense control and margin management. The company reaffirmed full-year guidance and emphasized continued investment in new store growth and high-return strategic initiatives.

Underneath these results, Academy is pursuing an aggressive modernization of its technology infrastructure to support future growth and sharpen its competitive edge.

The company is investing in a broad overhaul of its core enterprise systems, starting with ERP and CRM, while modernizing its data architecture, collaboration tools, and AI capabilities. This transformation is not limited to backend efficiency; it extends directly to the customer experience, with new capabilities in personalization, product discovery, and omnichannel integration.

Academy is aligning IT strategy with key business goals such as increased supply chain responsiveness, data-driven merchandising, and scalable customer engagement, ensuring the company can serve both in-store and digital shoppers with speed, precision, and consistency.

Why It Matters: For retailers seeking margin expansion and omnichannel consistency in a challenged consumer environment, the backbone lies in their systems. Academy’s technology agenda reflects the modern CIO playbook: unify, simplify, and automate. These investments not only streamline operations but also power the personalization and responsiveness that customers increasingly expect. For tech leaders, Academy offers a case study in using core IT modernization as a growth multiplier, not just a cost center.

• ERP Overhaul Anchors Multi-Year Infrastructure Strategy: Academy is undertaking a comprehensive replacement of its legacy ERP systems with a modern, modular solution designed to unify key functions across merchandising, supply chain, finance, and store operations. CEO Steve Lawrence emphasized the long-term ambition: “This will modernize our tech stack, enable future growth, and drive long-term productivity improvements.” The new ERP platform will serve as the connective tissue between transactional data and decision-making tools, allowing for improved forecasting, fewer inventory blind spots, and streamlined execution across departments. Early work is already enabling better integration across merchandising and replenishment, with additional capabilities expected to roll out through 2025 and beyond.

• CRM and Data Modernization Power Customer Relevance: A new customer relationship management (CRM) system is in development, supported by a re-architected enterprise data platform. Together, these tools will allow Academy to centralize customer insights, deliver more tailored messaging, and unlock segmented promotions tied to lifecycle and behavior. “We’ll be able to deliver more relevant communications and promotions to our customers,” said Lawrence, pointing to the goal of increasing repeat visits and average order values. For CIOs, this represents a shift from fragmented campaign tools to an integrated, insight-driven marketing engine – key to converting loyalty into revenue. Data governance and omnichannel identity resolution are central pillars of this rollout.

• Cloud-First Tooling Enhances Agility and Efficiency: Academy is migrating core productivity and collaboration systems to cloud-based platforms, giving its teams more flexibility while reducing on-premises maintenance burden. CFO Carl Ford stated these changes are “freeing up resources while improving the way our teams collaborate and respond to customer needs.” These tools are expected to play a critical role in enabling faster iteration across marketing, store ops, and digital product teams. The shift also supports hybrid work environments and ensures IT resiliency during seasonal peaks.

• AI Applications Advance Merchandising and Discovery: Artificial intelligence is being woven into Academy’s ecommerce platform and merchandising workflow, particularly in areas like personalized product recommendations, dynamic site search, and behavioral targeting. Lawrence noted that AI is helping customers “find what they’re looking for and improve their digital experience,” while simultaneously informing product assortment decisions at the category level. These early applications are expected to grow in sophistication, enabling use cases such as churn prediction, promotion optimization, and inventory balancing across locations.

• Omnichannel Execution Strengthened Through IT Alignment: The company’s push to optimize buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS), ship-from-store, and inventory visibility initiatives is grounded in backend tech improvements that connect store systems with digital channels. With investments in real-time inventory tracking and fulfillment intelligence, Academy is creating a seamless commerce environment across touchpoints. “We’re committed to providing a seamless customer experience across channels, and that starts with having the right systems in place,” Lawrence said. These upgrades are also enabling smarter labor allocation and reducing fulfillment lead times, capabilities increasingly essential for operating at national scale.

Go Deeper -> Academy Sports Earnings – MarketBeat