Why digital assortment planning is key to retail success

Retailers race to adapt to the ever-changing and increasingly complex retail environment. Digital assortment planning is critical to delivering the right product and the right price to the right place. When retailers expand their sales networks to more geographies, a wider variety of channels, and variations in store formats, they also add layers of complexity. Creating assortments has never been so complex because customers now shop across geographies, channels, brands, and business models. Yet most companies still rely on simple spreadsheets and manual processes to manage this critical activity.

A better solution is needed, one that defines the assortment process and gives retailers the tools they need to optimize assortments.

Deloitte’s Digital Assortment Solution (DAS) is designed to combine smart analytics, flexibility, and integration on a leading-edge technology platform. Deloitte’s solution, powered by the Anaplan platform, is connected, agile, analytical, and automated to provide retailers with a sustainable competitive advantage.

By using the DAS to help transform the merchandizing process, CMOs can efficiently drive sales, improve margins, and fine-tune inventory levels. There are seven key decision points in development assortments, as shown below.

Deloitte’s Digital Assortment Solution (DAS) is designed to combine smart analytics, flexibility, and integration on a leading-edge technology platform. Deloitte’s solution, powered by the Anaplan platform, is connected, agile, analytical, and automated to provide retailers with a sustainable competitive advantage.

Hind-sighting informs the strategy behind the assortment plan, involving analysis of past performance and alignment with trend forecasting and the strategy for the coming season. Deloitte’s module uses multi-dimensional analytics to recommend assortment breadth and targets (both additions and subtractions), and it seeds the plan with placeholders.

Deloitte’s Digital Assortment Solution (DAS) is designed to combine smart analytics, flexibility, and integration on a leading-edge technology platform. Deloitte’s solution, powered by the Anaplan platform, is connected, agile, analytical, and automated to provide retailers with a sustainable competitive advantage.

The conceptual assortment plan is a list of products, or product placeholders, that are planned for a future selling period. The DAS helps planners start building their assortments based on attributes, current styles, or even products still in development with the PLM system. Deloitte’s solution lets marketers develop one integrated assortment representing multiple channel needs, speeding the decision process that surrounds product exposure timing.

Once deployed, retailers begin realizing operational benefits that include optimized assortments, assortment visibility, improved inventory, data-driven decision making, and improved efficiency. In addition to operational improvements, we’re seeing an impact in financial results, such as improved sell-through rate, increased sales,