• Evaluate assortment planning capabilities and management software with natural integration and scalability. The extent of this solution should also encompass global access.
• Offer integrated planning for performance marketing and merchandising capabilities, provide customer-centric assortments, drive real-time pricing and promotion modeling and localized recommendations, and provide global support.
• Provide a planning outlook and a short list of viable vendors to aid organizations in discovering the assortment planning software market.

In evaluating the market space for assortment planning software, Info-Tech’s analysts looked at the following vendor attributes:

• Breadth and depth of capabilities
• Vendor footprint (market presence, share of mind, stability, and long-term viability/investments)
• Automation and integration expertise
• Customization potential and ease of use
• Pricing transparency

An assortment planning and management solution aids in creating consumer-centric plans through a comprehensive grouping of planning and execution processes that links merchandise planning with purchasing, allocation, and replenishment through continual validation against strategic goals.

Localization is the primary business factor behind the increasing number of assortment planning management initiatives and technology investments.

Presetting these processes not only saves the enterprise time and labor gathering and understanding large amounts of data; it also speeds up pricing and promotion and exploits the merchandise financial outlook for the enterprise. With greater assortment visibility, the organization can improve its decision-making and reduce localization risk.

Assortment management software can be deployed on-premises or as a SaaS-based model. However, the SaaS-based model is increasingly attractive because it enables organizations to save further time and labor hours by outsourcing support and maintenance.

Source: Statista, 2022.

• Develop integrated merchandise plans down to sub-class/ product-level
• Forecast the weekly plan for sales, stock, and intake to control purchases and flow of product

• Cluster channels, stores and locations based on similar attributes, customer behaviors
• Create merchandise categories based on groups and allocate stock based on pricing and promotions

• Assign products to stores, locations, or channel clusters
• Plan sales for each cluster by product/by week
• Refine Assortments continually throughout the season

• Assign floor space/location to a product category
• Assign shelf space/location to a product/sub-category
• ‘Brokering’ space between categories to optimize store- or cluster-level product mix

• Determine future demand using statistical forecasting tools and allocate and replenish stock
• Align statistical sales forecasts with merchandise plans to develop
  “consensus plan”

• Build a digital media marketing plan and calendar to drive advertising campaigns
• Select and purchase media for campaigns
• Execute mass media marketing campaigns and track them with the right metrics.

• Integrate promotions & advertising
• Implement price controls by setting and maintaining prices across the range
• Execute profitable promotions and maximizing markdown margin

Item planning and target creation

Pre-season and in-season planning with financial indicators that include sales, markdown, receipts, inventory, gross margins, and open-to-buy.

Channel clustering and segmentation

Grouping of channels, stores, and locations into clusters based on similar key attributes for category or customer behaviors.

Range plan and roll-up

Ensure assortments match consumer demand and provide assortments to customer preferences.

Item creation commitments

Create complex item management capabilities, including setup and maintenance of the item descriptions and attributes, weights, and dimensions.

Demand forecasting

Provide planning forecasts for short-, mid-, and long-term assortment models with little human involvement.

Order management and reconciliations

Facilitate the order management process across management suppliers.

Allocation rationalization

Use of sales demands forecast and stockholding to drive allocation and replenishment.

Application automation (AI)

Applications leverage embedded science, AI, and automation to provide an effective assortment strategy to maximize return on investment.

Analytics, reporting, and dashboards

Access to real-time dashboards and data interpretation, which can be exported as reports in a range of formats.

Analyse2

Offers cloud-based SaaS automated solution with robust product features.

Infor

Offers an intelligent supply chain and merchandising enterprise SaaS suite.

First Insight

Offers SaaS assortment solution with predictive analytic models.

Just Enough

Provides globally supported mid to large-market assortment solutions.

Blue Yonder (JDA)

Offers integrated innovative planning and assortment execution enterprise solutions.

Logility

Provides SaaS planning solutions that aid small, medium, and large companies.

O9 Solutions

Delivers cloud-based assortment planning, analytics, and data platforms to enterprises.

Oracle

Large vendor; provides integrated, single view of the enterprise planning and execution.

SAS

Provides integrated planning with advanced business intelligence and analytics.

SAP SE

Large vendor; mature real-time end-to-end (E2E) integrated automated solution.

Symphony

Provides E2E intelligent assortment planning and optimization solutions.

TXT e-solution (Aptos)

E2E integrated assortment suite; Intelligent visual planning in-memory computing.

Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Analyse2

Espoo, Finland

51 - 200

• Product features – A software-as-a-service solution which automates the right product to suitable locations. Robust product features like sales, pricing, and execution, in addition, show improvement opportunities.
• Analytics and insights management – Established categories which show the potential of the category as well as its sales and development.
• Supports retailer-supplier collaboration to build on shopper needs, targets the right market cluster, and appropriately allocates each category.
• Customer reviews show loyalty – Customers have seen a 3% point increase in gross margin, a 5% increase in sales, a 25% increase in customer loyalty and an 80% reduction in time for assortment planning.

• Limited global presence – Currently has offices in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Mexico, the U.S., and Brazil.
• Needs to prioritize other sectors – Has a significant presence in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) business and food retail.
• Lack of patents and other standard intellectual property.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Infor

NY, USA

17,000+

INFOR: NYSE

• Product suite – Infor provides a SaaS suite for commerce, supply chain networking, and merchandising decisions to retailers, wholesalers, and brands.
• Cloud deployment – Infor customers can deploy its solutions on a private cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services.
• Broad portfolio – As part of the merchandising suite, they also provide solutions for planning, pricing, demand forecasting, and replenishment to retailers and wholesalers.
• Advanced analytics automation in assortment management application processes, including multiple solvers, machine learning, and NLP.

• Future roadmap – Focuses on increasing intelligent process automation, AI, ML demand forecasting engine, and real-time collaborative planning across suppliers, retailers, and channels.
• Largely active in the U.S. market – It is expanding its geographical reach rapidly in EMEA and APAC regions, countries to scale in the tier-1 market where customers are located. .

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

First Insight

PA, USA

51 – 100

Private

• Best product performance for new items – First Insight's SaaS assortment solution offers retailers and fashion brands insight into expected product performance and optimal entry price points for new items with no sales history, all within 48-72 hours.
• Predictive analytics models filter and weigh consumer input, ensuring that retailers and brands listen to the right consumers.
• Uses real-time data analytics and customer feedback to optimize product assortments identification and design cost investment decisions.
• Helps drive margin gains for retail brands by showing them which products can fetch a higher price than planned with Margin Mover.

• Offerings are for small and emerging enterprises. Essentially, review customer support and implementation capabilities during the RFP and contractual process to ensure adequate understanding and commitment.
• Need to focus on training and customer support. Even though their big data scalable platform enables thousands of consumers to evaluate hundreds of new products through gamification and crowdsourcing.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Just Enough

Irvine, CA, USA

101 – 250

Private

• Guided localization –Just Enough’s assortment planning solution guides you through the process of creating localized assortments based on financial objectives.
• Automated planning feature – Enables building out assortment plans automatically, helps identify segment customers by their propensity to buy, and incorporates demographic, geographic, psychographic, and social data via access to the central data repository.
• Cloud deployment – Just Enough is one of the vendors that support AWS, Google and Microsoft cloud implementations.
• Strong international support footprint and a variety of customers around the globe.

• Future roadmap – Focuses on adding intelligent cashflow forecasting, AP automation, additional country extensions, and additional industry-specific functionality.
• Sales and support – Areas of improvement include the provision of solid sales and deployment support, technical support, and training and documentation.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Blue Yonder

AZ, USA

5001 – 10000+

Private

• Unified planning and execution – A cloud-based offering via its partnership with Microsoft on the Azure platform. Integrates the merchandise financial planning process with the downstream execution systems. It also has an extensive global implementation footprint.
• Single view of assortments – Visualizes a complete season with a holistic view of product offerings and quantitatively measures at aggregated levels like class or category.
• Intelligent, localized assortments – Aligns with customer preferences and has scoring-based recommendations on groups for better localization.
• Enhanced Assortment Frameworks – It leverages AI ML for predictions and leverages multiple data analytics insights to build a firm conceptual plan.

• Future roadmap – Focuses on investments in modernizing its legacy applications and strengthening its ML capabilities.
• Lacks packaged integrations with standard ERPs

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Logility

GA, USA

250 – 500

Private

• Collaborative planning – Logility is a leading provider of SaaS collaborative planning solutions that aid small, medium, large, and Fortune 1000 companies.
• E2E Advanced analytics competencies – Logility is one of the vendors that fully provide all retail assortment management capabilities. It leverages advanced analytics throughout its application suite.
• An extensive implementation footprint and its references showed the highest propensity to select and use it again.
• Cloud deployment & partnerships – Logility is active on AWS for cloud implementations. It has recently partnered with Microsoft Azure to power high-performing cloud environments and enhance the customer experience.

• Future roadmap – Focuses on AI-based solutions. Leveraging ML tools to augment performance and automate planning execution.
• Acquisition of AdapChain is having an impact, and it expects an improvement in this area.
• Aims to merge the solution with its digital supply chain platform to power planning with a view toward the future.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

O9 Solutions

TX, USA

1001 – 5000

Private

• Automated planning and execution – Offers leading cloud-based AI-powered assortment planning, analytics, and data platform called the Digital Brain.
• Localized assortment planning generates optimal product mixes with many assortment strategies that are based on and linked to product attributes.
• Integrates assortment across all product types – Basic, seasonal, fashion, hardlines, softlines, or grocery. Including prescriptive product recommendations for future seasons or years.
• O9’s product strategy leverages data and AI to support better decision-making across the value chain.

Future roadmap – Focuses on transforming its planning by implementing E2E and real-time planning across the enterprise.

Integrated real-time replanning – includes demand-to-supplier planning as well as integrated real-time replanning. And new digital technologies are planned.

Offices in fewer counties than other leading vendors, while it has an above-average number of distribution partners.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Oracle

TX, USA

135,000+

ORCL: NYSE

• Most prominent vendor in this market space; with Oracle assortment planning, the enterprise develops authentic and loyal customer relations by providing the right product in the correct location.
• Leverages the wedge builder algorithm, embedded science, and automation to deliver an effective assortment strategy to exploit return on inventory investment with real-time alerts and dashboards.
• Enable in-season business role-based processes, providing planners with practical plans for season-to-date actuals and trends with exception management.
• Massive global presence across all regions. Offers flexible product and location attribute management and analysis across assortment planning.

• Future roadmap focuses on the increasing use of innovation with the use of AI/ML in areas such as enterprise forecasting and intelligent merchandise assortment execution.
• Autonomous planning is lagging other players – Oracle’s foresight for aligning the predictive and prescriptive analytics support is lagging.
• Additional deployment costs likely; Usually requires OnDemand support on a subscription basis.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

SAS

NC, USA

15,000+

Private

• Customer-centric integrated assortment planning and optimization via predictive recommendation, prescriptive analytics and advanced clustering.
• Enables support for unlimited dimensions, scenario planning with AI and machine learning-based assortments, and integrated demand forecasts.
• Supports cloud-native collaborative planning to rapidly take control of enterprise merchandise planning with the power of analytics in the cloud.
• Strategic partnership with Microsoft enables the SAS Viya suite of analytics, AI, and machine learning tools to be accessible on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

• Future roadmap – Focuses on leveraging intelligent statistical forecasting with AI/ML, analytics, and automation.
• Not as global as some of its competitors. SAS has an increasing international presence.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

SAP SE

Germany

100,000+

SAP: ETR

• Established worldwide vendors with an increasing emphasis on software and applications. Targets mid-sized and large enterprises
• Unified data, planning, and predictive analytics platform – SAP retail planning applications run on the SAP Activity Repository application
• Enhanced integrated planning – SAP assortment planning enables companies to localize products to boost revenue and margins.
• Aids in building a more customer-centric real-time clustering – Built on the foundation of SAP's Customer Activity Repository (CAR), which uses SAP Hana for in-memory computational capabilities.

• Future roadmap and strategy include leveraging emerging technologies such as predictive analytics, AI/ML, blockchain, and the IoT to run next-generation business processes as a service (BPaaS) and have merchandise and assortment industry cloud by 2024.
• Scope creep may occur, requiring further investment into the SAP S/4HANA for additional capabilities.
• Integrations outside of SAP need to be explored.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Symphony AI

CA, USA

1001 - 5000

Private

• Enables intelligent clustering and assortment optimization – The solution allows localizing a customer-oriented assortment to changes in customer demand instead of waiting for a calendar-based update.
• Provides best-of-breed solutions for merchandise assortment with these modules – Agile merchandising and floor and shelf intelligence.
• Digital Assistance – All modules are enhanced and differentiated using CINDE technologies, the artificial intelligence-enabled digital assistant designed explicitly for grocery and hard goods retail support.
• Shelf intelligence solution maximizes planogram ROI and improves regulatory compliance.

• Future roadmap – Emphasizes advancing innovation with real-time insights in its Eureka AI platform. Alongside dynamic decision-making by understanding the unique attributes driving changing customer demand and correlated attributes.
• Verify integration, customization, and ease of deployment during the RFP and contract process.

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Vendor Name

Headquarters

Employees

Presence

Aptos (TXT Solution)

GA, USA

501 - 1000

Private

• Aligns strategy with execution, delivers a strong brand message to target customers, goes faster through the merchandise lifecycle, delivers optimized assortments and ensures that customer demand is optimized across channels.
• User interfaces, powerful optimizing algorithms, & advanced product visualization capabilities exploiting the Microsoft technology stack plus proven software architecture, databases and middleware – cohesive, flexible environment and low cost of ownership.
• Has a growing installed base (40+ assortment planning customers) – It also helps drive local and international market growth with multi-language, multi-country functionality.

• Future roadmap – Focuses on an E2E integrated product portfolio with a focus on analytics, customer engagement, and inventory management.
• Verify implementation timelines and ease of integration during the RFP and contract process to ensure adequate understanding and commitment.

Opaque (request quote)

Info-Tech recommends reviewing the complete list of assortment planning and management software solutions, emphasizing those vendors on the right side of the matrix (high in functional viability).

Based on our initial scan of the assortment planning management software market, we believe that these vendors are likely to be the best fit, absent information uncovered in pricing discussions or detailed technical assessments.

The next steps are to undergo a right-sized vendor selection process.

• This process includes,
• Gathering and prioritizing granular requirements.
• Shortlisting vendors.
• Participating in vendor demonstrations.
• Selecting the right vendor based on a weighted-average scorecard.

We encourage reviewing our relevant research:

• The Rapid Application Selection Framework
• Improve Requirements Gathering

Software Selection Insight

Balance the effort-to-information ratio required for a business impact assessment to keep stakeholders engaged. Use documentation that captures the key data points and critical requirements without taking days to complete. Stakeholders are more receptive to formal selection processes that are friction free.

The Software Selection Workbook

The Vendor Evaluation Workbook

The Guide to Software Selection: A Business Stakeholder Manual

Work through the straightforward templates that tie to each phase of the Rapid Application Selection Framework, from assessing the business impact to requirements gathering.

Consolidate the vendor evaluation process into a single document. Easily compare vendors as you narrow the field to finalists.

Quickly explain the Rapid Application Selection Framework to your team while also highlighting its benefits to stakeholders.

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