Retail assortment management applications are foundational for modernizing merchandising processes as part of a digital business transformation strategy in unified retail commerce. The demand for these products is based on the item being on trend, seasonal or in fashion and, following maturity, demand will decline. Customers are increasingly becoming frustrated by wide assortments of excessive products that are prone to stock-out gaps, especially within short life cycle retailing with the proliferation of stock-keeping units (SKUs). They are now expecting retailers to provide an editing service to pare down item choices to those that are relevant to their lifestyles. Intelligent curation of assortments is enabling fashion retailers to present a reduced, but more targeted, assortment of styles and colors that are less confusing and are more in line with consumers’ values. This will translate to a boost in sales and profit margins, a decrease in end-of-season markdowns and reduction in waste.
Gartner defines supply chain planning (SCP) solutions as platforms that provide technological support to enable a company to manage, link, align, collaborate and share its planning data across an extended supply chain. An SCP solution supports planning, ranging from demand planning through detailed supply-side response planning and from strategic planning through execution-level planning. It is the planning decision repository for a defined end-to-end supply chain. It is also the environment in which end-to-end-integrated supply chain decisions are managed. It establishes a single version of the truth for planning data and decisions, regardless of the underlying execution technology environment. Organizations use SCP solutions to improve their supply chain planning decisions and reach higher levels of maturity.