INTEGRATED MERCHANDISE PLANNING

Any merchandising manager knows how complex the merchandise planning process can be. Assortment plans must relate directly to financial plans, space plans, brand strategies and more. And these merchandise plans must be accurate down to the local market and store levels.

In the Spotlight SAS, customers start retail 'evolution' with enhanced merchandise planning power

As part of an integrated suite of solutions for merchandise intelligence, the SAS^® Integrated Merchandise Planning delivers everything retailers need to create fast, accurate plans down to the store level.

Only SAS offers an integrated merchandise planning system that includes statistical forecasting, integrated business intelligence and the scalability to meet your needs for store-level merchandise plans. With SAS Integrated Merchandise Planning, you can:

Develop and implement optimal merchandise plans down to the store level. The solution includes integrated forecasting, easy access to relevant data and support for any plan size. Create better plans despite limited resources. With automated planning and a merchandise planning process designer, this solution provides intelligent recommendations and removes variability from the planning process. Ensure consistent performance and increase accountability. Use standard KPIs to maintain consistent measurement between departments, categories and locations. Integration with SAS Business Intelligence makes it easy to share performance information with the rest of the organization.

Because SAS Integrated Merchandise Planning is based on one integrated platform for data management, analytics and business intelligence, it keeps your total cost of ownership to a minimum. The solution includes:

• Performance analysis – Identify trends, gaps and opportunities by analyzing data at any level of the location, time or merchandise hierarchy.
• Financial planning – Set merchandise financial goals based on past, present and future demand.
• In-season management – Facilitate control of merchandise spending through open-to-buy and quickly respond to emerging business trends to maximize inventory investments and reduce liabilities.
• Assortment planning – Build the ideal breadth and depth of product to match your customers' needs and support your financial goals.
• Micromarketing – Make sure your customers are getting the products they want by creating intelligent, "tailored" assortments based on groups or clusters of stores.
• Space planning – Visually plan active assortments to ensure a consistent shopping experience. Meet margin and inventory goals by assuring that available space is optimized.
• Allocation – Analyze store-specific needs and improve inventory management with allocation and replenishment of basic, fashion and promotional merchandise.