Retailer’s New Merchandise Planning and Allocation Solution to Improve Results

A privately owned, $350M specialty multi-channel retailer of softlines and hardlines with a loyal customer following faced several challenges:

• Retail and catalog channels executed some form of planning; however, little or no planning existed in the e-commerce and wholesale channels
• Plans were created in Excel, creating a highly manual process with difficulty managing lower levels of planning
• Channels shared one inventory pool, therefore plans needed to be consolidated
• A replenishment system was used for store allocations
• No integrated calendar or process existed

To address these pain points, the retailer outlined a strategic initiative to select and implement an integrated merchandise planning and allocation solution to drive sales and gross profit growth across all channels.

The Parker Avery Group guided the retailer in designing and selecting a merchandise planning and allocation solution to enable the business’s strategic initiatives. Leveraging deep industry and retail system selection experience, Parker Avery performed the following key activities:

• Understand current planning and fulfillment processes and systems
• Benchmark the retailer’s current state against leading practices
• Develop future planning and allocation processes, roles, and responsibilities
• Develop business and technical requirements for the merchandise planning and allocation solution
• Analyze the vendor landscape and facilitate vendor demos and visits for a ‘best fit’ selection
• Develop a three-year roadmap, business case, ROI, and high-level implementation plan