Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP)
Turn financial targets into executable merchandising decisions
Merchandise Financial Planning is the strategic backbone of retail, defining how sales, margin, inventory, and receipts should evolve over time. Yet in many organizations, MFP remains disconnected from the decisions it is meant to guide. Financial targets are set at aggregate levels, while execution happens elsewhere—leaving planners to reconcile gaps manually and react late when performance deviates.
o9 Merchandise Financial Planning reconnects strategy and execution by embedding financial planning directly into the merchandising ecosystem. Built on a single data model, the solution ensures that financial targets are not abstract goals but active constraints that shape assortment, item planning, and inventory decisions. As the business changes, plans stay synchronized—pre-season and in-season—without relying on offline workarounds.
This shift transforms MFP from a static budgeting exercise into a continuous steering capability. Leaders gain confidence that financial intent is reflected in day-to-day decisions, while planners gain the flexibility to adapt quickly without losing alignment.
When finance and merchandising drift apart
The core challenge in MFP is not lack of intent, but lack of integration. Finance, merchandising, and supply chain teams often operate with different assumptions, cadences, and KPIs. By the time numbers are consolidated for review, market conditions have already shifted. Conversations focus on reconciling variances instead of deciding how to respond.
Legacy tools reinforce this fragmentation. Rigid planning models struggle to support omnichannel complexity, multiple calendars, or global operations. In-season reforecasting becomes slow and painful, forcing teams to choose between accuracy and speed. As volatility increases, this lag translates directly into margin erosion and excess inventory.
Modern retailers need MFP systems that can move as fast as the business itself—updating targets, recalculating OTB, and revealing trade-offs in near real time.
From static budgets to continuous financial steering
Leading organizations are redefining MFP as a living financial model that evolves with performance. Instead of locking plans at the start of the season, they continuously reforecast based on actuals and emerging signals. This allows teams to protect margin early, redirect investment toward winners, and manage inventory risk proactively.
o9 enables this evolution by linking financial plans directly to operational levers. When sales assumptions change, the impact on inventory, receipts, and margin is visible immediately. This creates a shared understanding across finance and merchandising and enables faster, more confident decisions.
What Makes o9 Different
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Financial Alignment
o9 MFP unifies strategic financial targets with bottom-up merchandising plans in a single financial model. Sales, margin, inventory, and receipt plans remain continuously reconciled across channels and categories, eliminating manual adjustments and version conflicts.
Real-Time Open-to-Buy Control
Open-to-Buy is dynamically recalculated as sales, inventory, and on-order positions change. Planners gain real-time control over inventory investment, enabling proactive financial steering rather than reactive course correction late in the season.
Scenario-Based Financial Decision Making
Teams can simulate alternative financial strategies—such as pricing changes, markdown adjustments, or growth rebalancing—and immediately understand their impact on margin, inventory, and cash. This enables informed trade-offs before committing to action.
Enterprise-Ready Financial Views
Financial plans can be analyzed across multiple hierarchies, including channel, region, department, and class, while maintaining a single financial truth. Executives and planners operate from the same numbers, at the level of detail relevant to their role.
Industries Supported
Powered by the o9 Digital Brain
MFP in o9 runs on the same Enterprise Knowledge Graph that powers merchandising and supply planning. This ensures that financial metrics are directly linked to products, channels, and operational decisions rather than managed in isolation. Calendars and currencies are handled natively, supporting global consolidation without manual translation.
The platform’s performance allows teams to re-forecast entire seasons on demand, enabling scenario-based decision-making without long processing times. Workflow and collaboration features ensure accountability and transparency across planning cycles.
Modular by design, enterprise by default
The o9 Merchandise Financial Planning solution is built on a unified financial and operational data model that connects strategic targets directly to merchandising execution. Rather than functioning as a standalone budgeting layer, MFP operates as a continuously updated financial control system that remains synchronized with assortment, item planning, and inventory decisions.
The architecture is designed to break down the traditional separation between finance and merchandising. Financial targets are not static outputs; they actively constrain and guide operational plans. As execution realities change, the financial view updates automatically, enabling leadership teams to manage performance dynamically rather than through periodic reconciliation cycles.
This architecture supports enterprise-scale complexity, including omnichannel operations, multiple planning calendars, global currencies, and varying levels of planning granularity. It ensures that all stakeholders—from executives to planners—operate from a consistent and explainable financial model.
Core Building Blocks
Pre-Season Financial Planning
This component supports the creation of top-down strategic targets for sales, margin, inventory, and receipts across channels, regions, and categories. Planners can build long-range and seasonal financial plans that establish the foundation for downstream execution.
In-Season Open-to-Buy (OTB) Management
Integrated OTB capabilities provide real-time visibility into inventory liabilities and receipt capacity. As actual sales and inventory positions evolve, OTB updates dynamically, enabling weekly or even daily financial steering.
Multidimensional Financial Views
The solution supports planning across multiple hierarchies—such as channel, territory, department, and class—without manual reconciliation. Users can pivot views freely while maintaining a single financial truth.
Financial Reconciliation Engine
Automated reconciliation ensures alignment between top-down financial targets and bottom-up operational plans. Variances are surfaced early, allowing teams to resolve gaps before they translate into margin erosion or inventory risk.
Advanced Building Blocks
AI-Enhanced Financial Seeding
Machine learning algorithms generate baseline financial plans using historical performance enriched with growth drivers, inflation factors, and recent trend analysis. This replaces manual “last year plus growth” methods with statistically grounded starting points.
Scenario Planning & Trade-Off Analysis
Scenario capabilities allow teams to model pricing changes, markdown strategies, or demand shifts and immediately evaluate their impact on revenue, margin, and inventory. This enables proactive decision-making rather than reactive financial adjustments.
Attribute-Based Financial Planning
Financial targets can be defined and analyzed by product attributes—such as innovation versus core, price bands, or fabric types—enabling more nuanced financial strategies aligned with merchandising intent.
GenAI Financial Co-Planner
Generative AI enables natural-language interaction with financial plans. Users can ask questions, generate alternative scenarios, and receive summarized insights, reducing dependency on manual analysis and accelerating executive decision cycles.
A digital operating model for VUCA conditions
APEX is o9’s AI-powered operating model for enterprises navigating volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). It enables organizations to plan, execute, and learn as one connected system.
The o9 Digital Brain powers APEX by connecting enterprise data, knowledge, and decisions through a single intelligent model.
Collaborative Demand Planning is one of the building blocks of the Digital Brain. It contributes domain-specific capabilities into the enterprise-wide model that enables APEX from the ground up—linking this solution to decisions across the entire value chain.
→ Learn how the APEX Operating Model works
Where AI drives real decisions
AI enhances Merchandise Financial Planning by transforming financial control from reactive reconciliation into proactive financial steering.
Machine learning models generate intelligent baseline financial plans by analyzing historical performance, trend shifts, and growth drivers, improving accuracy over manual “last year plus” approaches.
Prescriptive analytics evaluate financial trade-offs across pricing, markdown, and receipt scenarios, quantifying impact on margin, inventory, and cash before decisions are committed.
Generative AI enables finance and merchandising leaders to interact with financial plans using natural language, while agentic AI automates variance analysis, scenario comparisons, and early warning alerts for financial risk.
→ Learn more about o9 AI innovations
What our customers say
"We made the conscious decision with o9 to bring a quicker ROI by integrating with our legacy SAP. [...] When the full ERP transformation happens, we’re ahead of the game."
Paul Tips
Product Owner at Canyon Bicycles
"What's really succeeding with us is the idea of the connection to the data and a best-in-class UX/UI, so the people that use the business can really make an impact."
David Almeida
Chief Strategy & Technology Officer at Anheuser-Busch InBev
"With o9 AI/ML-based forecasting in place, we’re already seeing improved forecast accuracy, stronger cross-functional collaboration, and faster, more informed decision-making—all within a centralized platform."
Gaby Gutierrez
VP of Global Supply Chain Planning at Amway
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
MFP defines sales, margin, inventory, and receipt targets and ensures they remain aligned with execution decisions.