Merchandise assortment and planning from IBM

The goal

Enabling the best strategy

The merchandise assortment and planning solution from IBM can help you determine the products you should carry in each store and at what price. The focus is on mapping this decision to known customer preferences. With this solution, you can make informed merchandising decisions by accurately forecasting the right balance of inventory, location and pricing.

The advantage

Why IBM?

The merchandise assortment and planning solution from IBM is backed by over 30 years of experience servicing the retail industry. We:

• Leverage the experience of 4,400 consultants dedicated to consumer focused industries.
• Offer the IBM Retail Store Solutions group focused on solving in-store business and technical challenges.

Examples of our industry leadership include:

• Innovative technology breakthroughs—from inventing the barcode to helping develop standards for Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).
• A point-of-sale customer base that boasts over 60 of the top 100 worldwide retailers.
• The experience of providing services and technology to the WorldWide Retail Exchange (WWRE)—an online marketplace whose member retailers earn more than US$450 billion annually.

The benefits

The effect on my business

The merchandise assortment and planning solution from IBM can help you effectively plan, execute and manage merchandising strategies. With this solution you can base merchandising decisions on real world information about consumer demand and pricing sensitivity at individual stores or across the organization:

• Develop strategies based on consumer-focused attributes such as fashion theme, brand, price, trends and color group.
• Gather, analyze and leverage data based on market dynamics, trends, store sales history and consumer buying habits.
• Reduce the need for markdowns and sales by placing the right products, in the right location, at the right price.
• Define business rules and processes for distribution, product placement and inventory management.
• Leverage multiple channels as part of your merchandising strategy.
• Discover optimum price points at each store location—even with complicated product lines—by analyzing buying-pattern data.
• Measure the success of your merchandising decisions to quickly refine your approach and make short-term and long-range predictions.

The approach

What's the best strategy?

Those jackets aren't selling. What about the store in the next state? Will they sell there? Can I increase the price? What will that market bear?

My company sells soft drinks. But it's complicated. We've got six-packs. We've got cases. Some are in bottles and some are in cans. Some are regular and some are diet. What product combination will sell best where?

Do you have enough information to make these decisions? Is your merchandising system based on industry experience and high-level information like demographic profiles? To build a successful merchandising plan, you need better information.

Buying habits. Channel preference. Sales history. We can help you gather and analyze this critical customer data to increase sales at each store and improve the profitability of each product category.

The financial advantage

The payback

The merchandise assortment and planning solution from IBM can help:

• Increase profitability by synching inventory with demand.
• Increase sales by optimizing product pricing for each location.
• Save money by reducing the need for markdowns and clearance sales.
• Reduce training costs by providing an easy-to-use graphical interface.
• Reduce labor costs by automating manual, time-intensive merchandising processes.