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Articles
Beyond Product Planning: Where Are We Going
with Merchandise Planning? (Part I of Series)
Terry J. Donofrio, President
Retail Systems and Services (RS&S)
Over the last several years, retailers have
been able to enhance the capabilities and
functionality of their Merchandise Planning for
a number of reasons:
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Software
products have been available with improved
features, functionality, and technical
capabilities. |
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Retail
companies have used these new planning
tools to specifically improve and upgrade
their planning processes and
organizations. |
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Sophisticated
planning systems have helped retailers
sharpen their focus on the customer and
improve their micro marketing. |
Overwhelmingly, retailers have come to
realize that sound Merchandise Planning is the
first step toward improved analysis and control.
The starting point for all companies has been
“Basic
Product Planning,” which revolves around
two fundamental capabilities:
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to
generate accurate unit
and dollar merchandise plans
at multiple levels within the merchandise
hierarchy, applying top-down and bottom-up
approaches. |
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to
address on-going tracking
and monitoring against actual
information together with re-forecasts
based on recent trends. |
These “Basic
Product Planning” capabilities, or
techniques, are now considered industry best
practices. Companies have used them to replace
legacy spreadsheets or systems and have
integrated them with new planning organizations
and processes.
To accomplish these improvements,
companies are using very flexible and
customizable GUI-based planning systems.
Now
that the “Basics” are in place, where do we
go from here? To compete in today’s
multi-channeled environment, many retailers know
they must have additional planning functionality
and capabilities.
That is, they must build on their “Basic
Product Planning,” integrating a number of
capabilities that are becoming available. We
outline these enhancements in this article and
will treat each capability in more detail in
subsequent articles.
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