Retail Pro® V9 Planning

Retail Pro Planning is a sophisticated, yet easy to use decision support tool encompassing Merchandise Planning, Store Planning and Assortment Planning. Retail Pro Planning has an impressive and proven track record for ROI such as: improved sales, improved stock turn, increased mark-ups, lower average inventory and increases in gross margins.

The three-tiered architecture embodies best practices in retail planning methodology combined with state of the art technology. Decades of domain knowledge and methodology have driven this to become the most comprehensive of Planning Solutions.

Your Pre-Season plans are clearly tracked and efficiently monitored with unique In-Season re-forecasting analysis tools. Retail Pro Planning can be easily tailored and modeled to best suit your needs, but a best-practice Process Flow is conveniently included with the system.

Product overview

Integrated Merchandise Planning, Store Planning & Assortment Planning all in one sophisticated, yet easy to use product - Retail Pro Planning is one organic product where the above are implemented as separate templates, all of which behave in a consistent manner and as part of one system.

Graphical User Interface - Retail Pro Planning is powerful yet easy to use. One of its most popular features is the spreadsheet-styled data entry capability. It uses color coding of measures for consistent and intuitive ease of use; provides the ability to change layout of windows and views, and hierarchies can be collapsed or expanded.

Workflow - Retail Pro Planning uses workflow to guide users through the steps to plan, re-plan, approve and reconcile according to the enterprise-defined business processes for planning. The ability to reconcile between plans and create separate versions is built in for ease of use.

Soft Business Rules - With Retail Pro Planning everything can be user-definable. Intuitive templates reflecting planning best-practices are included and may be customized as required for specific business requirements.

Scalability - Retail Pro Planning has a three-tiered architecture and scales from the small retailer with a few users to the very large retailer with hundreds of users.

Price - Retail Pro Planning is attractively priced and affordable across all tiers of retail enterprises.

Design Studio - For companies that have custom requirements, Retail Pro Planning allows extensive customization in the form of the following:

• New Workflows
• Soft Hierarchies - add or remove levels from existing or new hierarchies
• Alternate/Multiple Hierarchies in Product, Location or Time dimensions
• Separate Templates for Merchandise Planning, Store Planning, Assortment Planning and Forecasting
• Attributes including Dynamic Attribute Hierarchies, Attribute Filtering and Store Grading using attributes
• Store Grading
• Maintenance of Measures, Templates, Calculation Modes and Formula

Merchandise Planning

Detail of Functions

• Sales targets based on last year plus a growth based on value or percentage
• Sales targets in Units using an average Retail Selling Price
• Choice of different tiered-plans for the various levels of merchandise hierarchy
• Planned Markdowns and Promotions
• Planned Shrinkage
• Sales and Receipts phased by planning period
• Plan End of Month inventory levels and Weeks of Supply and Stock to Sales ratio
• Plan Receipts and Open to Buy
• Plan Key Performance Indicators: Initial Markup, Gross Margin, Turn, Gross Margin Return On Inventory, Freshness of Inventory Ratios, Sell through ratio
• Weekly Stock Sales and Intake Plans
• Reconciliation with Store Plan

Assortment Planning

Detail of Functions

Assortment Planning is divided into a Quantitative Plan and a Qualitative Plan

The Quantitative Plan results in a Buyer's Budget (including Margins to achieve), often called the "Open To Buy" (OTB), a suggested number of options (style-colors/ways/lines) and the suggested number of units. This allows you to set the constraints on the buy and ensure that all the strategic thinking and high level merchandise planning, including turnover and profit targets, are carried throughout the planning process.

The Qualitative Plan is also called "Range Building" where buyers exercise their skills in selecting the make up of the options. Many attributes can be decided upon including Style, Color, Fabric and Vendor as well as Price (Cost and Selling/Retail) and number of units.

• Historical Analysis to assist in defining Continued and Discontinued styles
• Ability to create placeholder styles
• Plan the number of Units per Grade/Store based on space constraints
• Plan the number of Styles based on Last Year
• Reconcile the Open to Buy Budget Value from the Merchandise and Store Plans with planned Buy Units
• Classify styles by attribute e.g. color, patterns, fabric, fashion vs basic etc
• Assort by price point and Gross Margin contribution

Store Planning

Detail of Functions

• Store Grading and Profiling via measures and/or attributes
• Plans for Comp and Non-Comp Growth
• Plan key metrics per Store or Groups of Stores, Sales in Currency, Sales in Units, BOM Inventory, EOM Inventory, WOS, Margin percentage, Turn, GMROI
• Space Planning using Sales Density
• Performance and tracking
• Reconciliation with Merchandise Plan

Available in two versions to fit your needs

Two different versions of Retail Pro Planning means you get what's best for you. Small Business is the perfect planning solution for entry level and basic planning needs. Enterprise Edition offers more powerful and robust feature functionality for more complex planning needs. You decide.

Retail Pro Planning - Small Business

• One plan template is used to provide all of the functionality
• Available on the Windows platform using Oracle database
• Many users are supported via permissions applied to the access of this plan
• Inbuilt Report Writer

Customization capability (limited) Retail Pro Planning - Enterprise Edition

• Soft Hierarchies - add or remove levels from existing or new hierarchies
• Alternate/Multiple Hierarchies in Product, Location or Time dimensions
• Separate Templates for Merchandise Planning, Store Planning and Forecasting
• Attributes including Dynamic Attribute Hierarchies, Attribute Filtering
• Store Grading
• Assortment Planning

For more information and consultation, contact a One Step Data sales consultant at (866) 617-8181 or send email. Ask about our free online demo of V9.

Download Retail Pro brochure