This company’s processes and systems were antiquated and not connected, leading to manual and redundant work which hindered the ability to optimally serve customers as an omnichannel retailer with localized apparel products.
o9 Digital Brain for Softlines
A retail and wholesale business, offering an assortment of merchandise and services. They segment operates as a merchandiser of consumer products, under their own brands, as well as other e-commerce brands.
Sustainability Impact
Forecast accuracy improvement reduces exped logistics as well as excess inventory
Business Scope Challenges
Disconnected Solutions
Multiple solutions existed to support the apparel space allocation and assortment planning process. However, all of them were point solutions and most were spreadsheet-based, lacking simplification, connectivity and intuitiveness. They had unsuccessfully tried to implement a solution six other times with various vendors.
Opportunity
With o9, they have a single platform that integrates key business decisions throughout the entire assortment planning process. This allows for the improvement in the overall collaboration and efficiency of the users.
Assort Localization
Assortments based on consumer demographics and regional variances were not being planned with generic criteria being used, creating misalignment with space allocation and product offerings misaligned with customer expectations.
Opportunity
With o9, they now have the ability to determine, plan and execute granular assortment differences that take into account regional differences in size profiles, store specific space availability, variations based on individual store volumes and local preferences of consumers.
Enterprise Analytics
The company was not leveraging any enterprise analytic insights to optimize the space allocation and assortment development processes. They relied on manual calculations that varied by department and user, further diminishing their ability to localize their assortment.
Opportunity
With o9, they leverage advanced analytics to develop volume groupings, determine unconstrained demand impacts, optimize packs and associate stores based on selling patterns across the department.
Value Delivery
Key Functionalities Implemented
They are using the o9 knowledge graph to build a fully integrated pre-season space allocation and assortment planning process. This allows them to have a single solution that optimizes available space, develops an assortment framework, enhances assortment concepts, defines the buy quantity, create supplier quotes, auto create POs, determines the timing of receipts and optimizes the size and pack configurations.
Systems Replaced
Excel, Legacy Systems.
Customer Benefits
Success Factors — 3 reasons why o9 was selected
- Platform concept allowed them to develop apparel specific solutions while leveraging the core constructs of the o9 Platform.
- Ability to tailor the solution to the nuances of the processes at the company.
- User experience was deemed intuitive and flexible in support of the various stakeholders.
- o9 is Cloud-agnostic — which is aligned with the company longer term Cloud Vision of the Future.
KPI Impacted
- Improved revenue through better assortment localization and size offerings.
- Increased gross margin through reduction of markdowns and pack optimization.
- Enhanced process efficiency and stakeholder collaboration.
