Breaking News: ToolsGroup acquires Mi9 Retail Demand Management Business creating a prowerful production-to-purchase planning solution.
Maximize Profitability and Flow-through by Optimizing Product Assortments
Mi9 Assortment Planning guides users through the process of creating localized assortments based on financial objectives. The solution uses clustering, profiling, and other machine learning techniques to build out assortment plans automatically so that users can invest their time applying their unique knowledge of the business and their customers. The result is a single picture of the assortment plan including new, ongoing, and leftover product that can be assigned to planograms to align with space plans and constraints.
AI-Augmented Site Clustering
Clustering is increasingly important as the number of customers and locations grows and the pressure to ensure the right products are in the right place increases. Site clusters are the cornerstone of Mi9 Assortment Planning. The solution uses the AI concepts of machine learning and classification to cluster customers and/or locations on multiple dimensions including customer purchasing behavior, demographics, and store space. Dynamic clustering can be performed across time at any level of the product hierarchy. Users can create and maintain assortment plans by cluster with the ability to shift the makeup of each cluster in reaction to the changing needs of the business. Clustering can be used to more accurately target assortments and promotions to the right consumers, driving improved customer service and revenues.
Target Creation and Assortment Rationalization
“One of the most important things a planner does is determine the appropriate assortment width and depth (or assortment wedge) within store clusters across product categories and attributes, based on the financial objectives defined during the financial planning process. Mi9 Assortment Planning enables the rationalization of assortments across clusters leveraging anticipated market trends, available space, and demand, to determine the optimal number of assortment options. Users can segment hierarchy levels by a wide array of product attributes, both qualitative and quantitative, and then further subdivide and define plan targets and desired new choice counts all the way down to a cluster level. Once the assortment has been rationalized, Mi9 Assortment Planning can smart start bottoms-up assortment plans that automatically reconcile to the financial targets set for the organization.
Line Visualization
Line Visualization allows merchandise planning organizations to view, manage, and refine assortment plans at multiple levels of product and location hierarchies, whether or not they know the exact items they will be ordering within the assortment for key periods of time. Users can assort items to site clusters, craft demand plans via rate of sale, total sales, or total targeted buy quantities in both revenue and units, plan receipt flow strategies, and even manage sales and inventory plans pre-season or in-season by period all in the same assortment plan.
Receipt Planning and Commitments
Assortment receipt planning enables users to hone in on the ideal receipt strategy for items they are planning to purchase. Users can also set constraints, such as minimum periods of supply, define the periods in which receipts are allowed to arrive, and how many receipts are needed. Users can send commitment orders to the Order Manager for final processing, review, approval, and submission to external systems.
Assortment Rollup and Reconciliation
The Assortment Rollup and Reconciliation reports guide an organization in decisions related to merchandising strategies, pricing and promotions, open to buy, profitability, and inventory management. The Assortment Rollup and Reconciliation reports are a standard feature of Mi9 Assortment Planning enabling organizations to aggregate their assortment plan data, as well as reconcile key metrics that are set as targets within Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning.
