i2 helps retailers confront the challenges of the highly competitive contemporary retailing environment with advanced planning and supply chain software solutions that enable a superior, differentiated customer shopping experience, supply chain efficiency, and revenue growth.
Overview
In recent years a confluence of macro economic and structural trends created new pressures and new opportunities for retailers.
Barriers to global trade are tumbling down, and tectonic shifts in demographics are taking place that create an ageing population in North America and Europe and a rising middle class in other parts of the world. Additionally, dramatic geopolitcal events dominate headlines on a daily basis. These trends create opportunities for market expansion and cost advantages through the application of global sourcing strategies, but they also create a complex supply chain that is difficult and costly to manage, and unpredictable consumer spending patterns.
Concurrently, major structural changes are underway. Channels are blurring as retailers add new categories. Catalog retailers are opening physical stores; brick-and-mortar retailers are launching catalogs. The dominant value formats are relentlessly compressing prices and stealing market share with their super-efficient supply chains and a consumer value proposition of "good enough quality" at a lower price. In North America and Europe, many formats have saturated their markets with too many stores. New technologies are also available to enable new ways to service customers and enable lean supply chain strategies that were previously out of reach. Certain retailers are moving faster than others in the adoption of these technologies and enjoying the competitive advantage, while others fall further behind.
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