1 Introduction
Assortment Planning is the strategic cornerstone of retail, ensuring the perfect mix of products to meet customer demand while maximizing profitability. It’s about balancing breadth and depth of offerings, tailored to specific channels, locations, and timeframes. The Assortment Planning Cloud Service solution (APCS) revolutionizes this process by leveraging AI-driven insights, advanced analytics, and historical data to optimize inventory decisions for both Long Life Cycle (LLC) and Short Life Cycle (SLC) products.
At its core, APCS is powered by these two key components:
Assortment Strategy
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The strategic engine that analyzes historical performance to identify trends, uncover missed opportunities, and provide actionable insights for future planning.
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It optimizes assortments by determining the ideal number of options (SKUs), recommending key attributes (for example, color, size, or material), and tailoring offerings to specific store groups, demographics, and localized demand.
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For LLC products, it ensures a steady, profitable mix that aligns with long-term customer preferences.
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For SLC products, it identifies fast-moving trends and ensures quick-turn items are stocked optimally to capitalize on their brief market presence.
Assortment Fit
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A data-driven module that guides buyers and analysts in curating assortments for specific seasons, product categories, and store clusters.
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It fine-tunes selections based on localized demand, trends, and customer preferences, ensuring every store carries products that drive engagement and sales.
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Whether for LLC or SLC products, Assortment Fit ensures inventory is aligned with real-time market dynamics.
Additionally, the Item Flow Workflow addresses the unique challenges of SLC products, providing precise weekly sales and receipt planning. It supports both Single Drop and Multiple Drop strategies, using predefined sales curves and receipt parameters to optimize inventory and maximize opportunities for short-lived items.
Key features of APCS include:
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Historical Analysis & Optimization: Identifies lost opportunities and provides insights to improve future planning for both LLC and SLC products.
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AI-Driven Recommendations: Automates suggestions for product attributes and option counts, ensuring assortments are customer-centric
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Localized Assortments: Tailors offerings to regional demand, demographics, and store-specific performance.
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Dynamic Planning for SLC Products: Ensures precise weekly sales and receipt planning for short-lived items.
By integrating Assortment Strategy, Assortment Fit, and Item Flow Workflow, APCS empowers retailers to deliver curated, customer-focused assortments that drive sales, reduce waste, and capitalize on market trends. It is not just about managing products—it is about crafting experiences that resonate with customers and deliver unparalleled success.
In essence, Assortment Planning with APCS is where data meets intuition, transforming retail strategy into a dynamic, responsive, and profitable endeavor. Whether for long-lasting staples or short-lived trends, APCS ensures every decision is informed, every assortment is optimized, and every opportunity is seized.
Assortment Planning Cloud Service leverages the features of the powerful Oracle Retail Predictive Application Server Cloud Edition (RPASCE) platform, including AI Foundation recommended forecasts, assortments, visual planning, and alert management, and a powerful Oracle Data Visualization tool to slice and dice data and merge data for various levels of audiences in the organization, providing the platform to draw insights and make correct decisions.
Note:
Data Visualization reports are available out-of-the-box for the AP application. These reports allow you to analyze KPIs visually leveraging the best reporting capabilities Oracle offers. The reports provided out-of-the-box are expected to serve as a starting point for users. You can then further build required reports tailored to their specific needs. These out-of-the-box reports are included as part of the OAS catalogue. To access the reports, navigate to the Shared folder, then the AI Foundation folder and finally the AP folder.
Within the AP reports, you can view following visualizations:
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Product Attribute Overview
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Sales Review
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Top 10 Items
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Sales Analysis by District
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Location Analysis
Assortment Planning Cloud Service Benefits
Assortment Planning Cloud Service provides the following benefits:
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Optimized Product Mix: Delivers the right breadth and depth of products, tailored to customer demand and trends.
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Data-Driven Insights: Leverages historical data and AI to identify trends, uncover missed opportunities, and refine future assortments.
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Localized Assortments: Tailors offerings to specific store groups, demographics, and regional preferences for maximum engagement.
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Inventory Efficiency: Minimizes excess stock and reduces waste by aligning inventory with demand for both Long Life Cycle (LLC) and Short Life Cycle (SLC) products.
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Trend Capitalization: Quickly identifies and responds to fast-moving trends, ensuring SLC products are optimally stocked.
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Profitability Maximization: Balances variety and efficiency to drive sales and improve margins.
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Automated Recommendations: Provides AI-driven suggestions for product attributes, option counts, and sales.
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Dynamic Planning: Supports both LLC and SLC products with flexible workflows, including precise planning for short-lived items.
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Actionable Analytics: Offers clear insights and targets for buyers and analysts to make informed decisions.
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Scalability & Flexibility: Adapts to evolving business needs, ensuring retailers stay ahead in a competitive market.
In short, APCS transforms assortment planning into a strategic, data-powered process that drives sales, enhances customer satisfaction, and maximizes profitability.
User Roles
These two user roles are provided.
Planner
The intended business user of Assortment Planning Cloud Service is an Assortment Planner. Some organizations may call this person a Buyer. The role is responsible for creating an assortment, along with sales and receipt plans, that meet the strategy and financial targets set by the retailer to meet holistic financial goals.
Once the Assortment Planning process is completed, the user can plan the execution of that assortment plan with a weekly sales and receipt plan by item and location cluster.
Planning Administrator
The Planning Administrator role performs periodic administrative steps that drive some of the critical parts of the Assortment and Item Flow process. Several tasks that must be completed by the Planning Administrator before the Assortment Planner may begin their tasks.