Project Description
Program management and industry expertise to support an international retail planning, forecasting, and replenishment transformation and expansion, encompassing multiple merchandising systems, processes, and teams.
The Client
An international, multi-channel retailer based in France, offering read-to-wear, value-priced, fashionable clothing and accessories for men, women, and children.
The Challenge
With a complex business model consisting of retail, franchise, and e-commerce channels, the company was rapidly expanding across international borders, reaching 20 million customers in 32 countries. To consolidate buying power and improve supply chain efficiency, the company desired to improve its inventory management tools and business processes focused on a customer centric model. The company’s legacy systems needed to evolve to support the expanding international needs. As such, a new system supporting merchandise financial planning, (MFP), assortment planning (AP), forecasting, replenishment, and allocation was acquired to help enable the expansion and provide the ability to optimize inventory across channels and countries.
At the same time, the product lifecycle management (PLM) processes and tools were being upgraded to support more efficient and responsive product development processes in producing the best products to align with the company’s target markets.
The Parker Avery Solution
The Parker Avery Group worked closely with the client team in program management and business analyst capacities across a multi-track, multilingual retail transformation program that included MFP, AP / item planning, forecasting, replenishment, allocation, and PLM.
The transformation team was large and required Parker Avery to lead, manage and tightly coordinate internal and external project experts in order to successfully execute the five project tracks in parallel. Parker Avery deliverables included:
- Strategic roadmap
- Program management
- Program structure and governance
- Business process mapping, leadership, and expertise
- User acceptance testing strategy and scripts
- Change management
- Organizational design contributions
The Result
Parker Avery helped the client instill deeper insight into the design of the new system’s forecasting and MFP capabilities. Following the implementation, the client expects the new processes and solution to align with their overall strategy and enable further international expansion, as well as the ability to optimize their product lifecycle management processes.