Merchandising & Planning
Today's shopper is more discriminating than ever before. She expects to find more of what she wants, through the channels and locations she prefers, with a superior shopping experience and at the right price. Buyers, planners and allocators can use merchandise insights to understand the root causes of what makes her shop, for what and when. Some of the trends that are pushing merchants to have to be smarter and faster using their existing and new data include:
- Financial pressure on the shopper to downsize the basket
- Movement to shorter, more flexible assortments & nimble investments
- Increasing influence of health, sustainability and lifestyle
- Interwoven engagement across multiple channels
- Interactivity in a community of purchasers via social media
- Compacted seasons and a faster spread of trends
- Exploding focus on private label merchandising
For today's merchandisers to effectively plan, merchandise, optimize and allocate, they need to take advantage of insights from a variety of analyses. Key areas of analysis tie to specific business processes. The processes of managing planning, inventory, selling, marketing, and assorting culminate in these solution areas:
- Inventory Exception Analytics & Prevention
- Planning & Allocation Effectiveness
- Market Basket Analytics
- Upsell, Cross-Sell & Assisted Selling
- Markdown Analytics
- Vendor Scorecarding
- Assortment Optimization
The business benefits of fast data-driven merchandising and planning include:
- Reduced stockouts leading to increased sales and margin
- Reduced overstocks leading to increased turns and lower costs
- More responsive, active vendors focused on what's important to you
- Free open-to-buy to be responsive to trends
- Fewer and smarter markdowns
- Fewer inefficient moves between stores
- Transformation of ad hoc merchandising processes to standard practices
Back
Read the Customer Stories
