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Case Study
Improving Merchandise Planning & Customer Order Fulfillment
Industry:
Footware & apparel manufacturer
Focus:
Inventory planning & customer order fulfillment
Senturus implemented a centralized inventory planning solution to improve inventory planning and customer order fulfillment.
Challenge
The client’s consolidation and periodic ERP updates of manufacturing plans using actual data took days to complete and produced many exceptions (e.g. extracting data, processing product mismatches, managing cutoffs and balancing). Reliance on large Excel workbooks wasn’t amenable to collaborative, parallel planning by the merchandise department. As one of the world’s top equestrian and outdoor apparel brands, the client needed a better method for merchandise planning and sales forecasting. Impacts to the business included
- Insufficient time for planning and analysis
- Products could not be reviewed as often as needed
- Open order rescheduling was not timely
- Low merchandise inventory turnover and low warehouse in-stock service levels for many products
Solution
Senturus replaced massive Excel workbooks with a centralized inventory planning model and web-based application organized by product. Merchandise planners are now able to collaborate on product reviews at least monthly. Annual inventory turnover has improved from three to more than four. Warehouse in-stock service levels for customer order fulfillment increased from 80% to over 90%. Capabilities include
- Unit sales and warehouse receipts are planned for active and close-out styles.
- Gross margin, inventory turn and weeks-of-supply are calculated and reported at all levels of the merchandise classification structure.
- ERP SKU data is mapped to merchandise styles.
- ERP data is used for all product attributes and roll-ups.
- ERP actual data updates are used for warehouse inventory, actual sales (shipments), actual warehouse receipts, future vendor reorders and open customer orders.
- Planning workflow status is tracked by style.
- Ability to adjust sales forecasts, future wholesale prices and expected landed costs, reschedule vendor orders and add new reorders.
- Data is published to the company data warehouse for reporting three times a day.
Annual inventory turnover improved from three to more than four.
About our client
Based in the U.S., the client is one of the world’s top equestrian and outdoor apparel brands.