Always-on Retail: Logility Automates Digital Planning from Product Concept to Customer Availability

By AIT News Desk On Jan 15, 2020

Logility Merges Art and Science of Retail Planning to Remove Risk and Accelerate Better Decision-making Helping Retailers Thrive in an Omni-Channel World

Logility, Inc., automating the digital transformation of advanced retail planning and supply chain optimization, is powering the always-on retail revolution by harnessing traditionally disparate data sources and real-time market signals to remove risk and deliver a synchronized plan from product concept to customer availability. Through the innovative use of artificial intelligence (AI), the Logility Digital Platform helps retailers automate routine processes and augment valuable talent resources by transforming retail planning and execution to significantly improve visibility and enable rapid response to market shifts and consumer preferences, accurately predict future market needs and improve in-stock positions while optimizing inventory investments.

“Retailers and brand owners face rising uncertainty created by unpredictable macro-economic policies, faster product lifecycles, increased frequency of new floor sets and new market threats from areas as diverse as fast fashion and technology giants such as Amazon”

Retail businesses generate a lot of data from multiple sources including streaming data such as Click Stream, point-of-sale (POS), syndicated sources such as IRI and Nielsen, Internet of Things (IoT) as well as unstructured sources such as social media networks. Many merchants are not able to harness the full potential of this data to drive new business insights. According to RSR Research’s “Innovation in Retail 2019: Keeping it Real” Benchmark Report, more than 90 percent of survey respondents believe information is a strategic asset and is critical to a retailer’s success.

The latest version of the Logility Digital Platform delivers several enhanced capabilities to accelerate planning from product concept to customer availability. With near real-time access to information, retailers and brand owners have unprecedented visibility across their operations including suppliers, contract manufacturers, partners and retail customers. With Logility, retailers have a single platform that supports global, multi-enterprise collaboration including sourcing, quality and compliance to ensure corporate social responsibility (CSR) mandates are met throughout the network and quality merchandise arrives when, where and how planned.

Historically, retailers have settled for a merchandise plan based heavily on the prior year, known as Last Year. The move towards multi-horizon, multi-season planning requires the ability to harness multiple sources of data and more advanced forecasting methods that leverage artificial intelligence to gain visibility and precision to drive more accurate supply, sourcing and production plans. This allows retailers and brand owners to quickly adjust product assortments based on the stage of a product life cycle, selling season or replenishment period. And, reduces noise across the entire retail planning process to connect the high-level business and merchandising plans to the detailed sourcing, production and allocation plans.

By breaking down information silos, Logility accelerates the flow of information across the business connecting departments and visibility from design inspiration to accurate size and pack plan optimization for faster distribution to stores and other channels. The Logility Digital Platform’s size and pack optimization delivers the ability to allocate based on store need with an accurate combination of pre–pack and bulk stock. Retailers can now automatically ensure each location receives the right merchandise in the right quantity to efficiently satisfy demand.

Merging the art and science of retail planning, Logility’s Inspiration Board combines the designer’s creativity with the constraints and insights of merchandise planning to ensure sourcing and production can meet the specifications outlined. Buyers can quickly develop collections and know if the supply chain will be able to support the plan.

“Retailers and brand owners face rising uncertainty created by unpredictable macro-economic policies, faster product lifecycles, increased frequency of new floor sets and new market threats from areas as diverse as fast fashion and technology giants such as Amazon,” said Allan Dow, president, Logility. “The Logility platform enables retailers to move to a continuous planning process that allows merchants to get closer to the consumer and sense and respond to their changing preferences and accelerate business cycles from product concept to customer availability.”