/

/

Apparel & Footware

Stepping Up Speed-to-Market: How a Global Footwear Leader Synchronized Global Planning to Slash Stock-Outs

When a world leader in innovative footwear struggled to link top-down financial goals with bottom-up sales reality, they faced a choice: continue with manual silos or reinvent their planning. Discover how they leveraged o9’s AI-powered platform to unify demand and supply planning, resulting in higher inventory turns, significantly reduced lost sales, and the agility to deliver personalized products to market faster than ever.

This customer needed to connect top-down and bottom-up planning, lower inventory turns while retaining great margins, and bring additional personalization and speed-to-market to consumers across a variety of different distribution channels.

Sustainability impact

Reduction of inventory, efficient capacity utilization, and reduced multi-node excess transfers.

challenges

Complexity to Clarity

Challenge

It was a struggle to link top-down planning to sales and inventory planning within a monthly cycle.

Solution

With o9’s Enterprise Knowledge Graph, the company is able to connect the dots for holistic planning, effectively ensure alignment in execution of the plan, and is able to make decisions based on real-time insights when corrections are necessary.

Value Delivery

Systems Replaced

  • Excel
  • Homegrown solutions

Key Functionalities Implemented

The o9 Enterprise Knowledge Graph was used for AI-powered demand planning to improve accuracy and reduce bias.

Intelligent supply planning provides an immediate response to demand scenarios, using o9’s advanced solvers and inventory capabilities to bring down working capital and optimize service levels.

Customer Benefits

success factors

  • o9’s single interconnected platform allows for all planning processes across the business.
  • Flexible platform and digital twin of the supply chain to address the unique challenges and opportunities of the footwear industry.
  • Future-proof platform with continuous innovation in advanced analytics, NLP, ML, and AI.

KPI Impacted

  • Increase in inventory turns.
  • Increase in resource efficiency.
  • Reduction of lost sales due to stock-outs.

The Complete Guide to Strategic Demand Planning 2026

Forecasting is the first step. Learn how to transform predictions into precise actions.

Discover our platform

Experience the power
of o9 first-hand

Discover the platform

Take a Tour

See how the o9 Digital Brain unifies planning, forecasting, and execution through AI-driven intelligence.

Discover our platform

Live Demo with an o9 Expert

Get a personalized walkthrough with an o9 solution specialist and see how to drive faster, smarter planning decisions across your enterprise.