The Best Formula for Retail Merchandising
Merchandising decisions directly affect your bottom line because the inventory you have determines the purchases your customers will make. For example, the strategies you use to decide which products will be replenished and when they will be available determines how much gets sold at full price and what gets marked down at a loss. This is a tricky proposition that keeps the task of retail merchandising a challenge.
The best way to approach merchandising is to compile all consumer purchase data (including real-time updates) along with pertinent supply chain information and analyze that data effectively. ChainDrive provides the tools to do this so that your formula for merchandising can be simple:
Sophisticated analytics + real-time consumer purchase data = optimized assortments
Taking a quick look at each of the components of this simple formula begins to define what must be done.
Sophisticated Retail Merchandising Analytics
Software tools that offer conditional queries enable the analyst to see true size performance by capturing snapshots of instances throughout the product lifecycle. Things that could otherwise skew the results, like stock-outs in a particular size, can be seen in proper perspective for an accurate analysis.
The centralized database gives ChainDrive superior flexibility for analysis tasks because all the information is there. Every channel, department, store, etc. from one end to the other feeds data in real time into that base where it is stored securely. Those with authorized access can find whatever they need for the task at hand.
Real-Time Consumer Purchase Data
Since the goal of merchandising management is optimized assortments for purchase, an accurate view of what is being purchased is essential so that comparisons with historical data are complete. Real-time collection of consumer purchase data enables this accuracy because the information is automatically gathered and errors are minimal.
Optimized Assortments
The goal of merchandising is optimized assortments. This happens when performance monitoring, multiple replenishment methods, allocation, and the rest of your merchandising decisions pay off in stocking the items that customers are looking for at the price they find attractive. So many factors go into reaching this goal that a generic merchandising software program is not going to be adequate for the job.
The ChainDrive Merchandising component is an intuitive, leading-edge tool that is fully customizable and fully supported by a team of professionals who are available whenever you need help. That gives your formula for retail merchandising the additional power you need to win.