Optimization Uniquely in Context of Your Plan

For retailers with short lifecyles, finite inventory, uncertain demand, and long lead-times, meeting plan determines predictable profits.

Pre-season you plan your merchandising and allocation with weekly sales and margin objectives that roll up to meet corporate objectives. In season, when actuals differ from plan, Price and Allocation are powerful levers to get you back to plan most profitably.

Across the lifecycle by product, location, and channel, Forecast Horizon:

• Tracks actuals to identify where you're beating, missing, and meeting plan.
• Forecasts demand given actual sales and planned promos through end of plan.
• Optimizes Prices and Allocation to shape demand to get back to plan most profitably.
• Provides the recommendation in context of your key metrics for 3X the acceptance rate.

The art of Retail results in Buys of the right amount of hit merchandise. The science of the Buy and allocation of inventory is based on a Plan that aligns demand over the lifecycle with sell thru, margin, and sales targets. For example, in week 4 my objective is to be 40% sold thru of style ABC with a resulting Margin of $X and Sales of $Y. The reality is that actual sales and inventory often differ from that Plan. Missing Plan can result in inventory build up with slash and burn pricing. Not knowing that you are beating Plan can result in unnecessary discounts as well as empty shelves before the next flow. Each week Planners and Merchants need actionable answers to the question of “How I am performing against plan?” and “What do I do about it?”

Pricing Shaping Demand

Price is a powerful lever to meet Plan objectives most profitably. Forecast Horizon Price Optimization uses the Plan when recommending the best price by style, location, and week for predictable performance. In particular for short life cycle and seasonal items, Optimization engines trying to maximize margin without a Plan will hold price longer at the expense of holding inventory too long only to slash and burn at the end.

Plan sell thru targets ensure inventory is turned most profitably on a weekly basis. Based on the Plan time horizon, Forecast Horizon recommends optimal prices by store and week, times the first price cut, and targets the optimal depth of discounts.

Just as a Plan varies for Short- vs. Long-Lifecycle products or Fashion vs. Basic, Forecast Horizon optimization accounts for your objective, Plan and Pricing Rules to more accurately recommend prices to meet business objectives. Forecast Horizon optimizes pricing across the entire lifecycle from Initial Price, through In Season Promos and End of Season Markdowns.

Answers in Context

Each week Planners and Merchants manage against Plan. With Forecast Horizon, these users have science-based answers in context of how they already make pricing decisions. Recommendations in context of the Plan objective and Pricing Rules with the necessary supporting information improve performance and improve efficient collaboration across planners and merchants. Forecast Horizon reports are configurable to display the metrics that matter and employs innovative data visualization to easily identify performance against target. Users easily drill down to understand recommendations and can perform on demand What If pricing scenarios with Revenue and Margin impact.

Key Product Highlights

• Perform what-if analysis with real-time sales and margin impact.
• Group products on demand to adjust pricing unconstrained by the product hierarchy.
• Adjust plan targets as needed to meet objectives that are feasible and best for business.
• Auto-accept by default for efficiency as well as track performance and adjustments.
• Leverage existing IT investments in Merchandising, Price and Promo Management, Allocation systems.
• Easily adapt to changing business needs.
Industry-leading price-performance – 10x performance, 3x adoption, at 1/3 the cost of competitive offerings A nimble platform for advanced analytics - Scalable – commodity architecture leveraging Amazon cloud computing Full compatibility with market-leading data warehouse, ERP, BI applications and infrastructure Enterprise-class reliability – More than 99.99% uptime

Transparent and Nimble

Price optimization software traditionally comes as a "black box". Evolving from this closed and rigid approach, Forecast Horizon integrates your Plan objectives, optimization science, and existing IT investments into a nimble profit-maximizing solution.

Extensive collaborative design of the application with out-performing Planners, Merchants, and Executives resulted in highly configurable reports/ UI that leverage innovative data visualization and incorporate key business metrics for intuitive optimal prices. Optimal answers to your complex questions are in context of how you manage your business.