TL;DR:
- Centric Software introduces market-driven innovations to Centric Planning, their retail planning solution.
- The platform helps various industries, including fashion and luxury, achieve digital transformation goals.
- Centric Planning optimizes margins, enhances inventory management, and improves team collaboration.
- It’s part of Centric Software’s concept-to-customer product solution, offering user-friendly financial and merchandise planning.
- The AI/ML engine drives strategic decision-making and SKU management through advanced analytics.
- The cloud-native architecture ensures high-speed processing, even with large data volumes.
- Leading retailers like PVH Europe, Triumph, and Guess have reported significant benefits, including increased operating margins and reduced planning cycles.
Main AI News:
In the rapidly evolving world of retail, Centric Software® continues to lead the way with its cutting-edge retail planning solution, Centric Planning™. This innovative platform empowers brands and retailers across various industries, including fashion, outdoor, luxury, and more, to achieve their digital transformation goals and stay ahead of the competition.
Introduced in 2018 to address the demands of the omnichannel era, Centric Planning has garnered widespread user adoption by delivering tangible results. It offers a solid return on investment by significantly enhancing profit margins, optimizing inventory management, and revolutionizing team collaboration.
Centric Planning is a key component of Centric Software’s comprehensive concept-to-customer product solution, designed to drive innovation and value creation for consumer goods retailers, brands, and manufacturers. This best-in-class solution provides user-friendly financial, merchandise, and product portfolio planning, as well as store and vendor forecasting for seamless pre- and in-season execution. As with all Centric solutions, Centric Planning seamlessly integrates with other business systems.
What sets Centric Planning apart is its sophisticated AI/ML engine, which drives strategic decision-making and optimizes SKU and omnichannel management through advanced analytics and forecasting. Its cloud-native, SAAS architecture ensures high-speed processing and powerful performance, even when handling large volumes of data.
For brands and retailers, especially those dealing with extensive SKU catalogs, Centric Planning offers a modern approach to merchandise planning. Its highly configurable, out-of-the-box, modular design allows businesses to conduct merchandise financial planning within the same solution environment as assortment, allocation, replenishment, and demand planning, creating a competitive and strategic end-to-end approach to retail planning.
Centric Software’s commitment to innovation has attracted leading retailers worldwide, including PVH Europe, Triumph, Blue Star Group, and many more. These organizations have recognized the transformative capabilities and strategic value of Centric Planning, joining a growing list of fashion retailers like Guess, Replay, and About You.
User feedback highlights remarkable benefits, including:
- A 200+% increase in operating margins
- A 75% reduction in planning cycles
- Synchronized top-down and bottom-up planning processes
- An accelerated time to market by two weeks
- Reduced logistics costs
- Enhanced employee satisfaction
Furthermore, Centric Planning boasts a 100% user adoption rate, thanks to its intuitive interface and a winning combination of visual and data-driven planning tools.
Guess, an iconic fashion retailer, implemented Centric Planning in 2021 and has witnessed a remarkable increase of over 200% in operating margins. Daniel Botey, Vice President of Global Inventory Management at Guess Europe Sagl, emphasizes the tool’s significance, stating, “Without Centric Planning, our jobs would be impossible today.“
Pedro Monteiro, Global Sales Planning Lead at Triumph, echoes the sentiment, saying, “With Centric Planning, we expect to be far more agile in forecast accuracy and time to market by speeding all aspects of the planning process and rapidly responding to market changes.”
Riccardo Proni, VP, Planning R&D at Centric Software, underscores the company’s commitment to continuous improvement, with nearly 100 new features added to Centric Planning in the last twelve months. This includes the Visual Assortment Board for Planning, allowing brands and retailers to combine visual product data with Centric Planning’s analytical capabilities for assortment planning.
Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software, sums it up by saying, “Centric Planning is a future-ready solution, and we are proud to partner with leading brands and retailers to continue to innovate in response to market needs.“
Conclusion:
Centric Software’s continued innovation and the widespread adoption of Centric Planning™ by leading retailers signal a significant shift in the retail market. The platform’s ability to improve margins, optimize inventory, and streamline planning processes is a game-changer. As more businesses embrace this technology, we can expect a more agile and competitive retail landscape in the future.
