Products and Services

Click Here To Download:
•White Paper: The Demand-Driven Retail Continuum: Connecting The Dots Between People And Processes
•White Paper: Tomax And Retail.net: IT Execution

• Reporting
• Forecasting
• Inventory Management
• Replenishment
• Allocation
• Open To Buy
• Revenue Management

After the merchandise plan is completed, the ‘bell rings' and merchandise management becomes the focus of the business. Quality forecasting and replenishment solution/systems are critical to success in the next phase of the business continuum.

Unlike traditional solutions, Tomax has designed its Retail.net In-Season Merchandising components as a natural extension to the planning process. In support of the continuum, the solution functions to integrate the people and processes along the continuum, connecting people at corporate and store with the merchandising process through alerts and activity management instructions.

Forecasting
Everything starts with a sophisticated demand-driven forecasting engine, from which a comprehensive, multi-echelon view of inventory requirements can be determined across the chain (by store), sensitive to changes in demand, impacted by promotions, and adaptable to external events.

Many retailers deploy multiple forecasting approaches in support of separate components of the retail continuum, finding themselves dealing not only with an unnecessarily complex situation, but also with poorly coordinated results. Retailers need inventory requirements that react in realtime to changes in demand, new promotions, and constraints in the system. Tomax Retail.net stands apart with a key differentiator: a single demand forecasting engine that is the underlying foundation to the retail continuum, from planning through merchandising through labor requirements management.

• The demand-driven process is at work, with customers making purchasing decisions on a daily basis. It is impossible for retailers to react to customer decision without contemporary solutions and business intelligence.
• Retailing is a dynamic process affected by many factors (economy, weather trends, discerning customers, advertising, competitive strategies/tactics). Accordingly, the merchandising organization must be supported by:
  • Comprehensive report systems (metrics, graphics, variance hierarchies)
  • Sophisticated forecasting systems encompassing all of the important merchandising metrics

Replenishment
With the correct forecasting in place, the retailer can derive a comprehensive view of inventory requirements down to the item/store level in support of the demand-driven model (as opposed to the old "push" method).

The varying demands of customers related to merchandise, competitors, prices, and promotions require sophisticated replenishment systems that can deal with a large number of variables. Without these solutions, managed in a relatively simple process, the number of out-of-stock, over-stocks, markdowns and inventory waste can be enormous. Most important, the outcome of replenishment is the satisfied customer who will forego opportunities to shop elsewhere, and will "vote" to shop in that store again.

The Tomax Retail.net In-Season Merchandising solution enables interactive forecasting and replenishment with capability for the merchandising organization to analyze, understand and make decisions that improve sales and gross margin, while managing inventory. It Includes metrics and information not previously available to retailers, encompassing features that flow through the merchandise continuum including capacity, labor, space, financial, and logistical management.

Revenue Management Functions
Pricing decisions are critical, arrived at via a decision process focused on regular sales, promotional events, and liquidation of merchandise (primarily seasonal). Pricing decisions should not just be focused on ‘the lowest price' in a market driven by low-price retailers, but also the optimum prices, which provide the best financial results for a supermarket retailer. Similar to the need for weekly sales, gross margin and inventory forecasting, continuous pricing decisions must be made on a weekly basis.

These pricing decisions incorporate a number of variables that must be continually rationalized: regular sales, promotional sales, competitive store clusters, gross margin requirement, inventory ownership, all in relationship to an overall pricing strategy.

Retail.net Revenue management solutions are based on core business rules with sophisticated features and characteristics including:

• Focused (metric and graphic) user dashboards and portals
• Dynamic event management with calendar and drill down capabilities to facilitate top-down, bottom-up approach
• Weekly pricing review of timely, relevant and actionable information
• An advanced, rules based "expert" pricing system to support the merchandise plan and pricing strategy
• Pricing based on competitive by store/cluster competitive cluster
• Category decisions based on specific category objectives
• Closely monitored promotional "start and stop" dates
• Gross margin management flowing through to operating margin.
• Visibility to "out-the-door" pricing again plan and forecast
• "What if" scenario management
• Price Optimization as a logical extension this process

Click Here To Download:
•White Paper: The Demand-Driven Retail Continuum: Connecting The Dots Between People And Processes
•White Paper: Tomax And Retail.net: IT Execution

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