7thonline In-Season Merchandise Management
Understand Current Demand
Even with an optimally executed plan, reality will inevitably vary from that plan. Consumer preferences and buying activity are ever-changing, and variability in supply and deliveries will impact in-stock inventories. Retailers need a way to track in-season performance against plan in order to react as quickly and effectively as possible to meet forecasted demand.
7thonline enables the dynamic assessment and forecasting of sales, inventory, and receipts by week throughout the selling season so that merchandise assortments and promotional strategies can be adjusted to best match current demand. The embedded, easy-to-use business intelligence enables merchants to create flexible, real-time reports on the fly.
KEY CAPABILITIES
- Dynamic in-season assessment of merchandise assortment with robust forecasting engine
- Forecast based on current trend as well as multiple year historical seasonal selling patterns
- Analyze plan vs. actual vs. forecasted sales, receipts, inventory and open-to-buy
- Build custom reports on the fly with embedded, domain-specific business intelligence tools
- Track and forecast down to style/color/size by location by week
- System recommends markdowns or reorders based on current trend
- Utilize adjusted plans as basis for next season plan
- Integrate with 7thonline Merchandise/Assortment Planning and 7thonline Assortment Execution or with your own merchandising systems
- Forecasts seed future merchandise plans within 7thonline OptiPlan, enabling a 360° merchandising cycle.
KEY BENEFITS
- Guides profit-maximizing strategies for open-to-buy, reorders, markdowns, and flow planning
- Robust forecasting engine ensures plans are adapted to match current demand patterns, while incorporating multiple year historical seasonal selling patterns
- Real-time visibility into plan vs. actual vs. forecast - across organization and down to style by location - enables optimal and timely decision-making
- Increased sell-thru/reduced markdowns
- Reduced stockouts and excess inventory
- Web-architected system with 24/7 accessibility & portability
