Project Description
New Processes and System Drive Global Retailer’s Merchandise Planning Capability
Client Challenge
The client is a global direct retailer of women’s, men’s, and children’s apparel, as well as home accessories, operating significant catalog and internet channels, along with both company-owned and shop-in-shop brick-and-mortar locations. The retailer’s merchandise inventory planning organization was responsible for multiple business units and international operations. ​
As part of an enterprise-wide system transformation project, the company recognized that to support its growth initiatives, the planning organization needed to move away from homegrown Excel-based tools and adopt standardized processes and tools, guided by industry-leading practices, that would enable them to efficiently achieve their omnichannel strategy.
Parker Avery Solution
With client business and IT partnership, The Parker Avery Group led the design of new planning processes and configured a best-of-breed planning system to deliver the desired future-state merchandise financial planning capabilities.​
The team also delivered all testing, training, and organizational change management (OCM) activities to support the transformation of the retailer’s planning processes and capabilities.​
Major project activities included:​
- Business process design including the end-to-end inventory planning process​
- Application configuration, implementation, and support​
- Solution, integration, and user-acceptance testing​
- Change management strategy including impact assessment, communication plan, organizational structure, and training plan​
- Over 120 hours of global end-user training​
Results
As a result of the project, the client can create efficient and detailed omnichannel merchandise financial plans that push strategic targets across multiple levels of the product and location hierarchies for both pre-season and in-season planning cycles. Additionally, the client expects to achieve the following benefits:​
- Enhanced product planning, management, and analysis capabilities​
- Standardized tools and processes with consistent data driving increased collaboration, productivity, and transparency​
- Improved sales, margin, and inventory utilization
The Parker Avery Group is a leading retail and consumer goods consulting firm that transforms organizations and optimizes operational execution through development of competitive strategies, business process design, deep analytics expertise, change management leadership, and implementation of solutions that enable key capabilities.
