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Today’s challenging economic environment creates unprecedented opportunities, and risks, for retailers. As retail options expand globally, and customer-driven trends travel at internet speed, consumer buying patterns are changing more rapidly than ever. At the same time, uncertain macroeconomic conditions and impatient capital markets conspire to punish retailers with poorly conceived and/or poorly executed strategies.
Now more than ever, retailers must strike the right balance between customer-centric choice, product availability, and efficient investment in inventory. To succeed, retailers must become adept at forecasting inconsistent consumer demand, across all products and locations. Equally important, they must constantly improve their ability to respond to unexpected changes in customer demand by allocating and replenishing merchandise quickly and efficiently throughout their distribution and store network. Mistakes on either front negatively impact the customer’s experience, and ultimately, the retailer’s financial performance.
Mid-market retailers have an added challenge. Typical forecasting and replenishment software deployments favored by large retailers require substantial IT investments (money, time, hardware, and internal technical skills) which are typically beyond the means of mid-market retailers. Yet the manual, inefficient, and error-prone processes often in place are a major impediment to growth, especially profitable growth.
Fortunately, i2 Technologies has a solution designed specifically with the mid-market, high-growth retailer in mind. i2 is pleased to announce Store Replenishment Software as a Service. Now, retailers of all sizes can enjoy the benefits of a best-in-class forecasting and replenishment solution, for their entire distribution network, without the traditional complexity and expense of a major software deployment.
Benefits of i2 Store Replenishment Software as a Service
- Intuitive, accurate demand forecasts using industry standard and best-in-class proprietary forecasting techniques
- Forecasts that capture unique demand patterns at the product and location level
- Consistency in managing inventory levels holistically across the supply chain, across multiple time periods
- Better in-stock positions resulting in higher customer service levels
- Improved promotional effectiveness
- Reduced inventory levels with optimal inventory investments
- Increased inventory turns
- Reduced stock-outs and markdowns
- More efficient logistics and distribution operations through planning for constraints in storage, handling, and container load building
- Overall business productivity improvements due to increased visibility to key performance indicators, managing by exception and rapid re-planning
A Solution for the Mid Market
Store Replenishment SaaS addresses all of the implementation challenges facing mid-market retailers. The foundation of the solution is the same i2 Replenishment Planner application that has been driving the supply chains of $1B+ retailers. Based on i2’s extensive implementation experience, the mid-market solution comes preconfigured for each market segment. Instead of starting with a blank slate, each customer begins with a fully functional system which meets the essential needs of their retail business out-of-the-box.
The benefits of this approach are considerable:
- Rapid Deployment: Since the software is hosted by i2, the production system is ready for testing at the start of the project. Our implementation team works with your IT organization to get the data inputs needed to create forecasts and drive the replenishment plan. The expedited implementation enables customers to quickly start reaping the benefits of the solution.
- Low Cost of Entry: The hosted model matches the software costs with the savings. Since there is no large up front software license or hardware procurement expenses, the project costs are spread across the productive use of the software.
- No Surprises: All of the licenses, services, hardware, third-party software, and maintenance costs are rolled up into a single monthly fee. There is no need to worry about database administrator costs or hardware upgrades. All of the care and maintenance of the data is handled by i2.
Features and Functions Included in the Solution
Want to learn more? Contact Us, call +1-800-800-3288, or contact your nearest i2 sales office.
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