A new Approach to Retail Planning

While merchandise financial planning is a mature discipline, it often relies on highly manual and reactive processes to build an achievable plan based on historical performance. Traditional manual approaches typically lead to undesirable outcomes as sales plans remain vulnerable to external disruptions. Working capital becomes locked up in excess inventory, which is then cleared at discounted prices – sometimes to off- price competitors – or stored long-term for future seasons. Meanwhile, stockouts of popular items cause missed sales opportunities and customer dissatisfaction.

Blue Yonder is revolutionizing merchandise financial planning by seamlessly combining predictive analytics and generative AI with human expertise, to shift effort away from intuition and complex analysis. Instead, planners rely on orchestrated workflows focused on shared strategic outcomes, supported by transformative modern technology.

Leveraging generative AI, Blue Yonder’s guided planning experience creates dynamic recommendations that adapt to individual user contexts. With real-time access to the entirety of merchandise financial planning data, Merchandise Financial Planning fuses advanced analytics and conversational AI to streamline operational workflows and cultivate a dynamic, data-driven approach to retail management.

Decision-making is further enhanced by AI-enabled scenario planning that empowers retailers with unparalleled foresight, allowing them to model various market conditions and anticipate outcomes that consider the full spectrum of possibilities. Whether retail planners are optimizing inventory placement, planning pricing strategies or navigating market fluctuations, AI becomes a strategic ally that powers up the abilities of the merchandise team. Download the Whitepaper to see Blue Yonders new retail planning approach.