Breaking News: ToolsGroup acquires Mi9 Retail Demand Management Business creating a prowerful production-to-purchase planning solution.
Optimize Price and Markdown Plans Throughout the Product Lifecycle to Increase Revenues and Margins
Price and markdown planning are levers that smart retailers use to drive store traffic, manage product lifecycles, and maximize sales and margins. Mi9 Price & Markdown Planning provides intuitive, interactive views that planners can use to set multiple price and markdown structures with complete visibility into inventory, revenue, and margin impacts.
PRICE MANAGEMENT
Manage all Aspects of Product Lifecycle Pricing in a Flexible, Intuitive Tool
Mi9 Price Management enables users to control the complete lifecycle pricing of products – from initial price to price adjustments and markdowns through to the end of life. Prices can be created at any level of the product hierarchy with a complete view of current inventory and product rate of sale. The result is pricing that meets legal and corporate compliance while effectively managing product price lifecycles to maximize margins and customer satisfaction.
Create Price Plans
Mi9 Retail enables users to plan prices at a product level while reviewing the impact at an aggregate level. What-if scenarios allow for comparisons on unit volume, revenue, and margin. Users can also compare the target revenue from the Merchandise Financial Planning module. The plans can be further refined by geographic and demographic hierarchies. During the planning process, users can look at inventory and product rate-of-sale data, in addition to historical performance.
Rules Engine
The Mi9 Retail solution includes a powerful rules engine that allows users to create and enforce calculations and validation rules (for example, competitor, rounding, vendor, legal compliance, and financial rules) for internal and external purposes. Multiple rules can be designed to guide users through a defined workflow and approval process.
Validations
As the users are managing plans, they have immediate visibility into any potential problems before the plans are submitted. This reduces the planning process timeline, allowing for faster reaction to market conditions. The exceptions can also be made visible in the dashboard, focusing users on the elements that require attention.
Price Lifecycle Visibility
During the planning process, users have visibility to the entire price lifecycle of their categories and products. In one unified view, they can see regular, promotional, markdown, and clearance prices. This helps users to quickly and easily identify overlaps and decide on pricing cadence.
MARKDOWN PLANNING
Smart Retailers Use Markdowns to Increase Customer Demand, Better Manage Inventory, and Phase Out Products
Effective markdown management can help retailers drive incremental buyer traffic, reduce excess inventory at the highest possible prices, and support effective product phase-outs. Mi9 Markdown Planning provides an intuitive, interactive way to set multiple markdown structures while maintaining complete visibility into the impact they may have on inventory, revenue, and margin. With Mi9 Retail, creating a successful markdown strategy has never been easier.
Plan Price and Markdown Structures
Users have the ability to create a price and markdown structure at a product level with a complete view of current inventory and product rate of sale. Phase-out dates can also be set at the product level. Multiple markdown structures with variable durations can be easily set and the results are instantly available so planners can compare the impact of the markdowns on product margins, revenues, and unit volumes until the phase out date of each product.
Manage Product Phase-out
By setting phase-out dates, Mi9 Price and Markdown Planning can calculate products which are expected to exceed their phase-out dates and an estimated sell-through date is projected. The system also provides a suggested markdown rate in order for the product to be sold out by the planned phase-out date.
Manage Price and Markdown Plans
Price and markdown plans allow for a time-phased view of markdowns. Users can adjust markdown structures at different hierarchy levels or across a group of products by week, month, quarter, or season. Prices and markdowns can also be planned by channel, store cluster, or store. Aggregated price and markdown impact can be quickly and easily viewed in the detail pane or review pane.
