While integrated supply chain planning has significantly increased profitability for retail companies, they now face a host of new business challenges. These include a greater level of demand from customers, shorter product lifecycles, and increasing global competition. To address this, retailers must synchronize their retail level planning (merchandise and assortment planning down to the shelf level) to that of their supply chain planning (demand and supply planning).

HCLTech’s Integrated Retail Planning (IRP) framework transforms the traditional supply and demand balancing exercise into an integrated supply chain planning process that aligns a retail company’s supply chain plan and merchandise plan with its long-term business strategies and financial objectives. IRP simplifies integration, while making it quicker and cheaper to manage. Retailers can integrate selected applications from vendors and obtain the desired suite within weeks. They no longer have to sacrifice functionality for the sake of integration.

Strategic benefits of using Integrated Retail Planning include consolidated view for all stakeholders, a robust integrated solution with flexibility to bolt-on best-of-breed applications (JDA, SAP, and Oracle), coordinated new product plans, lifecycle planning, coordinated promotions and demand-shaping programs. Tactical benefits comprise product assortment tailored according to both consumer’s demand and retailer’s strategy, optimal prices for sales and margin growth, and better asset utilization. Further, there are operational benefits, such as significant savings in time and resources, maximized visibility, improved stock turns and a heightened customer experience. For retail companies that desire choice, flexibility, and freedom to create their own suite of best-in-class technologies from multiple vendors, IRP finds a premium spot.