Marks & Spencer is planning to spend around £140 million on digital and technology in the year ahead as it tries to move beyond the cyberattack that knocked its online business off course for months after Easter weekend 2025.
Chief executive Stuart Machin said the retailer's first half was dominated by operational disruption, but he said the company had now shifted from recovery to acceleration. M&S, he said, served 34 million customers last year, its highest number ever, and remains the most trusted UK brand according to YouGov.
The spending plan is concentrated in Fashion, Home & Beauty, where most of the £140 million will go. M&S also plans to roll out its planning platform and keep investing in its online capabilities, with near-term website and app work focused on search, imagery, checkout and payment. The move comes after online sales were down 18.4% at fiscal 2026 year end, a reminder of how badly the attack hit a business that has made digital service central to its pitch to shoppers.
Machin said that in digital and technology, recovery had been the priority over the last 12 months and that it was the right thing to do. He said M&S's job is to protect the magic of the 142-year-old business while modernizing the rest, and added that the company does not underestimate the scale of the change ahead.
The cyberattack left a deeper mark than a brief outage would have. M&S said it cost £131 million in resource augmentation, as it replaced remote outsourced technology teams, and in corporate advisory costs. The online operation was crippled for months before normal service was restored, and the company has had to rebuild customer confidence while continuing to trade through the after-effects.
That work is not finished. M&S is carrying out a multi-year SAP upgrade and replacement program, and Machin said each managing director now owns their own technology transformation. He said the retailer has also relaunched Sparks, its loyalty program, with a digital wallet and real money rewards after what he called one of the top three customer complaints over recent years.
The tension for M&S is plain: it needs to modernize quickly enough to prevent another costly failure, but not so aggressively that it loses what customers recognize as the brand's edge. The retailer says the next phase is about speeding up its digital transformation, and the success or failure of that push will shape how quickly online sales recover from a year that ended with an 18.4% drop.
