One of the retail businesses’ struggles is determining products customers want to purchase at a given period. Once they have found a solution, the next issue is to estimate the right inventory amount. Too small, and they miss out on sales opportunities, while too large and they tie up capital in surplus inventory or are forced to compromise their margins to eradicate it.
Assortment planning is one proven technique to avoid these types of mishaps. It’s all about choosing the right products and services and ordering accurate quantities to meet the needs and requirements of customers at the right time. So what’s assortment planning? Can you automate it through custom software development? And why is assortment planning so vital? Keep reading to discover more.
What’s Assortment Planning?
Assortment planning includes choosing the product category that’ll be offered in specific areas and during particular periods. It considers localisation, seasonality, and financial objectives of product selections so that your business and its customers can benefit from the result.
Assortment planning involves evaluating unique product attributes, such as price and stock keeping unit, function, colour, style, size, and brand performance during the selection process to address the needs and preferences of consumers. The assortment plan determines the products that make up your selections, segments, sub-segments, categories, and sub-categories.
Can You Automate the Assortment Planning Process?
Custom software development allows retailers to automate their assortment planning processes. A retail assortment planning system helps retailers develop an in-store merchandise mix and depth that meets the market demand and customer expectations. It helps maximise profits and boost sales by placing the right category of goods at the right time and store.
Assortment planning software collects and analyses data on consumer preferences, responses to promotions and discounts, and past purchase behaviour in order to stock the right inventory amount for every store. Retail assortment planning can integrate with different systems, including retail inventory software and POS software, to collect and analyse store-level information such as customer data, inventory-level data and sales data required for assortment planning of every store.
Why is Assortment Planning Vital?
Optimising product selection and shelf space has always been the main concern for many retail businesses. But why? It’s because the assortment of products is important in terms of customer satisfaction and demand generation.
One of the proven ways retailers can boost their financial performances is by increasing the levels of customer satisfaction by providing various products. From the supplier’s point of view, assortment selection and shelf category space allocation are similarly vital. Suppliers cannot generate even a single sale if their products aren’t on store shelves.
It doesn’t matter whether you operate a large, medium or small retail store; automated assortment planning solutions can enable you to make informed data-driven decisions that can make every season a high-profit one. Learn more about how to automate the whole assortment planning process.
