Merchandising and Category Management Consulting
Amplify your merchandising results with streamlined processes, aligned organizational resources, and technology that supports your objectives.
Even the largest global retailers face common merchandising and category management challenges:
- How can our merchandising, product development, planning, and other teams be more efficient and collaborative?
How can we improve our merchandising tactics to reach our strategic goals?
- How can we reduce our overall development and seasonal calendar timeframes?
Are our merchandising processes too complex?
How can we better leverage the functionality in our existing merchandising/category management systems?
Are our legacy merchandising systems hampering us?
What do we need to do to help us attain better merchandising/category management outcomes?
We help you solve challenges across all merchandising and category management functions.
Core merchandising and enterprise functions form the foundation of your brand’s operational environment, and they support capabilities that drive your value proposition. However, they often do not receive enough strategic attention. Without a modern, effective core merchandising system, downstream processes and systems are not as effective as they should be.
The ability to effectively plan and manage your merchandise is more critical than ever, especially related to buying and flow of inventory. It is no longer sufficient to provide a high-level number as guidance. Many large retailers are still operating with aging technology and disparate spreadsheets, which severely hampers the adoption of new capabilities.
Retailers need cutting-edge demand planning capabilities, supported by a modern system that considers factors beyond historical data. Further, leading brands employ a single view of demand, driven by advanced analytics with the flexibility to support metrics across the organization. This multi-dimensional view of a common demand signal dramatically improves collaborative, cross-functional decision-making.
Solid assortment planning and item planning capabilities will improve sales, margin, and inventory turns. But challenges like diverse assortment needs, lack of modern technology, ineffective organizational structure, and poor data quality hamper effective planning. Further, merchandising and planning organizations and processes must efficiently support the strategies necessary for successful omnichannel businesses.
Leading retailers are focusing on price optimization, markdown management, and promotions management capabilities. In addition to implementing modern pricing technology, retailers and consumer brands must develop effective pricing and promotional strategies and design the supporting processes, policies, and organizations.
Proper store clustering can maximize assortment planning and price management effectiveness, leading to substantial gains in sales, margin, and inventory productivity. By using advanced analytics to drive store clustering insights, you can offer the right products at the right prices across different locations and channels, ultimately improving business performance.
