Implementing Inventory Planning & Optimization Software That Will Help Your Business Succeed

As retailers all understand, inventory is one of the most critical aspects of a successful and profitable supply chain. In an ideal world, your retail business would have endless inventory, and you’d be able to instantly fulfill every customer order. Unfortunately, this would be impractical and unprofitable. That’s why it’s so important to plan accurate inventory levels and optimize your inventory. RPE can assist with this goal. By implementing inventory planning and optimization software solutions at your business, we can help you balance speed and responsiveness with realistic inventory costs and risk exposure, thereby maximizing your profits.

State-of-the-Art Inventory Optimization Software

In today’s retail environment, where retailers face growing competition across channels and where the need for innovation is constantly accelerating, businesses have to leverage the latest technologies to facilitate faster and more informed enterprise-wide decision-making. They need hyper-connected solutions that seamlessly integrate all areas of retail inventory planning and optimization into a single platform.

JDA (now Blue Yonder)—one of the industry’s leading providers of retail software solutions—offers the foundation for this platform. JDA inventory planning and optimization solutions align inventory levels with market trends, customer segments, top-level strategies, and operations constraints, thereby:

• Reducing costs associated with excess inventory and obsolescence
• Improving customer service
• Increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Offering greater visibility and flexibility
• Enhancing decision-making
• Enabling more agile and responsive operations
• Increasing profitability
• Supporting growth

Thanks to real-time inventory updates, your retail business will be able to rely on accurate, synchronized data, and you can even define and leverage customized inventory policies. With Blue Yonder’s suite of retail planning and inventory optimization solutions, you’ll gain a better insight into your business on a store-by-store basis and be in a better position to meet your financial goals.

JDA Enterprise Planning

JDA Enterprise Planning (also referred to as “Arthur Planning”) produces accurate, insightful, and coordinated plans and can help your company:

• Align inventory with pre-season and in-season goals
• Reduce markdowns and out-of-stocks
• Improve productivity

This innovative solution identifies a company’s common financial objectives for sales, inventory, receipt flow, margin, and other key performance indicators, then seamlessly incorporates statistical sales forecasts and consumer-driven channel clusters. It offers functionality that allows your team to dynamically group product, location, and time hierarchy members, thereby creating truly consumer-driven plans. It also features exception management capabilities that highlight specific areas requiring analysis, review, or approval, so your team will be able to quickly address issues across every channel, category, and store.

JDA Allocation

Accurate product placement is critical, and JDA Allocation helps retailers create profitable assortments in every channel and store based on current local demand. This solution can help your company:

• Align allocation to customer needs
• Reduce waste and unplanned clearance markdowns
• Increase retail supply chain visibility
• Automate key processes

JDA Allocation allows retailers to calculate and execute allocation plans based on sales history, on-hand quantities, and assortment plans, and users can even test allocation strategies using a “what-if” analysis prior to execution. Companies can group stores according to demographics, climate, grade, and location, then save their allocation methods so that predetermined methodologies can be applied in the future with just one click. Users can also schedule automatic allocations using established methods, allowing for “no touch” execution.

JDA Advanced Replenishment

JDA Advanced Replenishment (also referred to as “JDA E3”) is a cutting-edge inventory management solution that can help your company:

• Execute strategies
• Minimize its inventory investment
• Reduce lost sales
• Deliver high service levels
• Operate more efficiently
• Maximize profits

This solution provides support for the seven steps of buying: demand forecasting, lead time forecasting, order cycle analysis, service level analysis, replenishment, special order analysis, and order validity. With regard to lead time forecasting, for example, it finds patterns and trends based on historic lead times for items and vendors, so you can determine how far in advance to place an order. And, with regard to replenishment, it generates suggested order quantities on a nightly basis for every item and location.

For More Information

If you’d like to know more about the inventory optimization solutions we can implement at your retail business, contact RPE today.