3 October, 2024

Centric Software Retail Planning Empowers Brands & Retailers with Enhanced Analytics and AI-Assisted Decision-Making

New innovations include highly visual analytics and integrated market insights to plan on-target assortments and boost sell-through

CAMPBELL, Calif., October 4, 2024 – Centric Software® is pleased to announce updates to Centric Planning™ that deliver enhanced analytics and demand forecasting integration to plan and execute more on-target assortments. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise best-of-breed solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care and consumer electronics to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.

Regularly featured by leading industry analysts, including Gartner, Forrester and IDC, Centric Planning targets the unique challenges faced by the retail sector by providing a holistic end-to-end retail planning solution that integrates seamlessly with Centric Software’s wider end-to-end product lifecycle (PLM) platform, servicing the pre- to in- to end-season product lifecycle, from initial concept to product replenishment and clearance pricing.

Centric Planning’s industry-first integration with Centric Market Intelligence™ and Centric PLM™ combines advanced analytics and real-time market insights to enhance retail forecasting, consumer-centric decision-making and replenishment capabilities, all in one platform. Connection with Centric Pricing and Inventory™ provides AI-powered inventory optimization and markdown management. And the seamless link to Centric Visual Boards™ enables robust assortment development, product portfolio optimization and faster decision making.

The latest version of Centric Planning includes significant updates to its user interface and AI/ML capabilities, which enable brands and retailers to visualize analytics and data more effectively, better and more accurately forecast demand throughout the product sales cycle, easily embed retail industry best practices and improve decision-making.

Centric Planning leverages AI-driven forecasting, utilizing advanced algorithms that continuously learn and adapt to provide highly accurate demand predictions. This helps retailers and brands make smarter decisions on assortments, stock levels and product performance across different channels and locations. Additional Machine Learning methods have been integrated to support products with strong seasonal variations, even during the early stages of the season. AI-based forecasting also enhances the replenishment process. New AI basket analysis enables customers to understand sales correlations between products and adjust their assortment to better fulfil consumer needs.

These latest updates have expanded AI-driven use cases, explains Riccardo Proni, VP, Planning Research and Design at Centric Software.

“Our commitment to innovation is evident in our ongoing and dedicated exploration of how AI-driven forecasting can be used to quantify inventory needs for new products and pre-season planning, leveraging the limited amount of data available during this phase of the process. We are actively developing and refining advanced AI algorithms to analyze available data, such as similar product categories and market trends, to generate accurate demand forecasts. This evolving approach aims to provide retailers with better tools to make informed decisions before the season begins,” explains Proni.

Integration with Centric Market Intelligence enhances decision-making using Centric Planning, continues Proni, “We have reached a significant milestone by seamlessly integrating Centric Market Intelligence with our assortment planning capabilities. This enables us to incorporate crucial market trends and competitive data, such as pricing and discount information, into assortment planning. Our ultimate aim is to refine forecasting models even further by incorporating a broader range of competitive and market data, thereby empowering retailers to make more informed decisions on inventory management and marketing strategies based on evolving market conditions and competitor actions.”

“We are delighted to announce several important updates to Centric Planning that will deliver increased efficiency, better decision-making abilities and improved system performance for our customers,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “Our team is constantly innovating together with our customers to ensure that our solutions address the retail challenges of today and tomorrow.”

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