How retailers can plan for the unknown

How has the process for mer­chan­dise plan­ning evolved over the last cou­ple of years?

The biggest chal­lenge fac­ing retail­ers is the need to adapt to the chang­ing mar­ket con­di­tions and, specif­i­cal­ly, how cus­tomers are inter­act­ing with them. Com­pa­nies have realised that con­sumers want to engage with them in dif­fer­ent ways, across mul­ti­ple chan­nels, so they’ve got to be able to evolve their mer­chan­dise plan­ning accord­ing­ly – from what was a fair­ly stag­nant plan­ning process into a much more flex­i­ble one.

Omnichan­nel plan­ning process­es are noth­ing new to most retail­ers, but the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic rapid­ly accel­er­at­ed the pace at which it need­ed to take place. A lot of com­pa­nies, I sus­pect, thought they could take their time with this tran­si­tion over the next few years, but they very sud­den­ly had to change their process­es overnight because of how the pan­dem­ic changed con­sumer expec­ta­tions and buy­ing behav­iour.

In this land­scape, what are the key chal­lenges fac­ing retail­ers in mer­chan­dise plan­ning?

Retail­ers need vis­i­bil­i­ty and flex­i­bil­i­ty, but that’s dif­fi­cult to achieve when there are so many dis­parate sys­tems involved in mer­chan­dise plan­ning. They need to refer to a sin­gle plan across all areas of their busi­ness, so that when there is a change, every depart­ment is able to see it at the same time and react to it in har­mo­ny. There’s no point in the sales and mar­ket­ing depart­ments being aware of cer­tain changes if the sup­ply chain depart­ment is in the dark. It’s just going to end up as a car crash. Col­lab­o­ra­tion has always been the panacea for a bet­ter and smoother plan­ning process, but now it’s an absolute neces­si­ty because the rate of change means things will grind to a halt with­out it – and vis­i­bil­i­ty is an essen­tial enabler of that.

Why is it impor­tant that retail­ers address these chal­lenges soon­er rather than lat­er?

Already in the last few years we’ve seen a series of win­ners and losers. Retail­ers that saw the need to react to the clo­sures in the stores and strength­en their dig­i­tal foot­prints were able to keep their mar­gins and turnover high. Now they’re see­ing that their stronger dig­i­tal foot­print can sup­port their phys­i­cal stores, rather than replace them, and enable the omnichan­nel expe­ri­ence that cus­tomers desire. And now that con­sumers have this end­less choice of how to buy, they are look­ing at who has the best-qual­i­ty and most sus­tain­able prod­uct. Retail­ers have to man­age all of that with their sup­ply chain, and those with vis­i­bil­i­ty across their mer­chan­dise plan­ning process­es can react faster to chang­ing needs, and will there­fore retain and grow mar­ket share.

What advice would you pro­vide to retail­ers that are look­ing to evolve their end-to-end mer­chan­dise plan­ning process?

If you want to offer your cus­tomers a flex­i­ble expe­ri­ence, you need a flex­i­ble plan­ning process. If you haven’t got tech­nol­o­gy that can improve your over­all effi­cien­cy and speed to react to how cus­tomers want to inter­act with you, you’re going to be one of the losers rather than one of the win­ners. This is where Board’s deci­sion-mak­ing plat­form for retail comes in. By uni­fy­ing strate­gic, finan­cial and oper­a­tional plans, Board empow­ers retail­ers, includ­ing M&S, Max Mara, Reiss, and Ker­ing Group, to adapt and evolve vital plans at speed. By turn­ing data into insights, we help the world’s most inno­v­a­tive retail­ers super­charge their mer­chan­dise, assort­ment and replen­ish­ment capa­bil­i­ties.

Just like the retail­ers who sup­port their cus­tomers, at Board we also make sure we’re there to sup­port our retail cus­tomers. Com­pa­nies that use Board’s retail plan­ning tech­nol­o­gy can cre­ate the most sus­tain­able prod­uct at the right price, enabling them to con­sis­tent­ly opti­mise mar­gins while still giv­ing their cus­tomers exact­ly what they want. Show­ing that tech­nol­o­gy can absolute­ly affect the qual­i­ty of your retail offer for your cus­tomers while main­tain­ing your mar­gins, is now with­in the reach of every sin­gle retail­er today. Invest­ing in one sin­gle con­nect­ed retail plan, rather than lots of sep­a­rate sys­tems, is how to thrive in the years ahead.

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it board.com/retail

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