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In recent years, a convergence of macro economic and structural trends created new pressures and new opportunities for retailers. Barriers to global trade have tumbled. Tectonic shifts in demographics have created an aging population in North America and Europe and a rising middle class in other parts of the world. Dramatic geopolitical 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 unpredictable consumer spending patterns and a complex supply chain that is difficult and costly to manage.
Designed to overcome these challenges, i2 Retail Management provides the framework to drive results. It is a comprehensive methodology comprised of i2’s domain expertise, solutions, and service offerings that enable companies to create, evaluate, synchronize, review, and publish all plans across an enterprise.
Merchandise Financial Planning
As the retail industry evolves to adopt the latest technological advances to meet the needs of increasingly fickle consumers, and to manage economic fluctuations, marketplace competition has reached new heights. Traditional strategies for establishing differentiation and creating growth have become ineffective. This environment demands that retailers take a new approach to profitably synchronize inventory and space while meeting complex customer demands. Success requires an easy-to-execute, closed-loop advanced planning process that enables retailers to realize sales and inventory improvements while delivering a superior shopping experience to customers.
The i2 Merchandise Financial Planning workflow powers a closed-loop planning process to realize sales gains while delivering a superior customer shopping experience. It combines the “art” of planning with data-driven retail analytics and statistics. i2 Merchandise Financial Planning powers a planning process that drives top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out planning across channels and segments, and supports financial, merchandise, and location planning in a single environment. This process provides visibility into plan exceptions. Merchandise Financial Planning leverages the i2 Agile Business Process Platform, which is built on a highly scalable data and technology architecture, and integrates data into downstream buying and assortment management processes.
Buying and Assortment Management
The retail industry is in the midst of a profound transition. Channel blurring, price deflation, declining loyalty, and hyper-competition define the environment. Retailers must adhere to customer-centric strategies to protect and grow market share. Such strategies demand unprecedented precision, speed, and coordination in anticipating customer needs—down to the store level. Success in executing customer-centric merchandising strategies requires a new-generation approach to buying and assortment management.
i2 Buying and Assortment Management is a comprehensive assortment planning solution for the top- and middle-tier retailer. This highly interactive solution can enable buying and planning from the early conceptual stage to the final creation of market-tailored store assortments. Supporting receipt plans can be reconciled with top-down “open-to-buy” constraints dictated by the financial merchandise plan. i2 Buying and Assortment Management leverages the i2 Agile Business Process Platform, a highly scalable data and technology architecture that enables data-level integration into upstream merchandise financial planning processes as well as downstream allocation and replenishment management processes.
Allocation and Replenishment Management
Today’s consumers have unprecedented shopping options. Now more than ever, retailers must differentiate by providing a superior shopping experience. Whether customers walk away satisfied—or have to look elsewhere to make their purchases—hinges directly on a retailer’s in-stock positions.
But while having the right product in the right place at the right time remains undeniably critical, Wall Street demands superior inventory productivity. Traditional approaches to allocation and replenishment are no longer adequate to meet the requirements of the modern retail landscape. A next-generation allocation and replenishment management solution is necessary for retailers to meet increasing expectations for in-stock levels and inventory productivity.
In today’s business environment, retailers face a wide range of challenges when planning and delivering goods to maintain high levels of customer service with lower inventories. Missing revenue opportunities is not an option, especially when it’s due to the right product being unavailable.
i2 Allocation and Replenishment Management enables the creation of feasible and actionable plans that account for plan targets and constraints in a connected multi-level supply chain. Given that most fashion products go through a push (initial allocation) – pull (back-to-sales replenishment) – push (end-of-life or markdown) life cycle, i2 Allocation and Replenishment Management plans basics replenishment and fashion allocations in a single system. To ensure that the plans are executable, Allocation and Replenishment Management accounts for supply and capacity constraints to create feasible plans over time – every time. Also, the plans are created on a connected supply chain – from vendor to DC to store – in a single model.
Cycle Time Optimization
i2 Cycle Time Optimization accomplishes two key goals. First, it optimizes the procurement spend across the supplier base. Second, it minimizes the concept-to-store cycle time. This is enabled by:
- Establishing a collaborative design and product development process between merchants and the sourcing teams
- Enabling a pre-positioning of material and factory capacity to product that is synchronized with in-store dates
- Creating a differentiated flow of product to the store, driven by product and location segmentation
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“I am delighted to have i2 as part of a team responsible for building exciting and innovative solutions that will propel Payless ShoeSource into a leadership position in the retail industry.”
— Darrel Pavelka,Senior Vice President
Merchandising, Distribution, Planning and Supply Chain
Payless ShoeSource
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