What’s Next?

Clients, Analytics, and Shoptalk

While NRF’s Big Show 2023 is now an almost-distant memory, Parker Avery’s theme of “What’s Next?” continues full throttle through the first quarter of 2023 with our clients and firm initiatives. Here’s a snapshot from our latest newsletter.

Client Initiatives

What’s next in many of our client conversations includes more focus on demand planning and getting the right products in the right quantities to the right place at the right time. While this seems like table stakes, many retailers still operate with wildly different processes and juggle multiple demand forecasts and plan versions across the organization—even under the same banner. These disparities create incredible complexities and limit visibility, often resulting in uninformed and poor decisions. And with today’s macroeconomic conditions, including inflation and rising interest rates, excess inventories and unplanned markdowns wreak havoc on revenue and margins.

We are helping clients achieve better efficiencies by selecting new systems, redesigning their business processes, and reconfiguring roles across planning, allocation, and replenishment, as well as employing a single view of demand across various functions. Employing a refined and focused product assortment via both tools and processes helps eliminate unproductive products and avoid unplanned markdowns.

Many of our clients understand that their “next” must focus on improving their operating model by harmonizing disparate business processes, eliminating redundant tasks, and streamlining—many times outside of technology. We are leading these efforts and ensuring their new ways of working incorporate industry-leading practices.

Our latest work with clients also includes foundational processes and systems such as core merchandising and hierarchy (yep: the boring stuff that makes the shiny tech work). The pandemic and its aftermath highlighted ugly truths about antiquated legacy systems and band-aided spreadsheets still used by a surprising number of global retailers. We are helping our clients untangle those messes across business process, organizational, and technology perspectives.

For many clients, before “What’s Next” in terms of newer, sexier tech, their existing core business processes and systems must be assessed and often replaced or redesigned.

So, for many clients, before “What’s Next” in terms of newer, sexier tech, their existing core business processes and systems must be assessed and often replaced or redesigned.

Enterprise Intelligence Upgrades

What’s next in analytics? Sam Iosevich’s advanced analytics team of mathematics PhDs continues to make enhancements to our best-in-class demand planning platform. Used by some of the globe’s largest retailers, Enterprise Intelligence populates the hypercube across all dimensions and time.

What’s a hypercube?

Hypercube

It’s a demand projection across multiple dimensions (time, product, geography, channel, customer segment, and others).

What’s a hypercube you ask? Great question! It’s a demand projection across multiple dimensions (time, product, geography, channel, customer segment, and others). That demand signal can then be translated and integrated across a brand’s different systems, making them more intelligent.

Our latest enhancements encompass not just the deep science, artificial intelligence (AI), and reinforcement learning (RL) that drive our analytics, but also a new user interface (UI). Our new UI enables the hypercube to surface through a dynamic hierarchy structure in a way no other system can. Principal Marty Anderson is spearheading the UI effort and infusing a business-first approach based on his executive-level experience in the retail industry—ensuring it supplies functionality used by a demand planner. We are excited to be releasing it in mid-summer 2023.

Stay tuned! Or if you just cannot wait until summer, let’s set up a time to chat about Enterprise Intelligence.

Read the press release

Join Us at Shoptalk

What’s next on the big stage? Hot off the heels of NRF, Amanda Astrologo and Randi Nolan will join the lineup of speakers at Shoptalk in Las Vegas at the end of this month. Amanda is leading a panel session on pricing and merchandising technologies, and Randi’s discussion focuses on how companies are navigating their brand purpose.

If you are joining the fun at Shoptalk, be sure to attend these lively sessions (both are on Tuesday) or make plans to meet up with Amanda or Randi. In this case, what happens in Vegas—just may not stay there!

READ OUR SHOPTALK RECAP

Author

Tricia Gustin, Senior Director of Marketing

Tricia Gustin
Senior Director of Marketing

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.

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