New Forecasting and Replenishment System Supports Retailer’s Growth Opportunities

The client is an established, global direct apparel and home décor retailer, operating catalog and digital channels as well as company-owned brick-and-mortar stores. The retailer was operating numerous direct channels, physical locations, and new marketplaces. This complexity severely hampered the company’s ability to efficiently generate science-based, demand-driven, SKU-level forecasts as well as determine long-range replenishment plans. Developing a ‘global’ view of demand was limited by existing business unit silos and excess manual effort. Further, many forecasting and replenishment tasks were supported by spreadsheets or home-grown legacy applications that were outdated and difficult to maintain.​

Parker Avery partnered with the client in designing new processes and implementing a new cloud-based forecasting and replenishment solution that would support desired business capabilities, as well as long-term business and IT goals for an integrated planning infrastructure. ​

Leveraging deep knowledge of the client’s existing processes and organization, along with retail leading practices, the Parker Avery team:​

• Provided overall project management for the forecasting and replenishment system initiative​
• Led solution requirement validation sessions, critical topic ‘deep dives,’ and overall prioritization​
• Partnered with client and the software provider to define technical and integration requirements​
• Provided subject matter expertise for demand forecasting results, algorithm tuning, and replenishment parameters​
• Led organizational change efforts, covering training curriculum, communication strategy, user adoption, and sustainment plans​
• Partnered with the software vendor in developing e-learning training and support​
• Provided organizational design leadership to support the new solution​
• Reviewed, influenced, and drove testing, training, and cutover action plans​