Align finance and merchandise planning for retail

Background

This model provides Connected Planning between merchandise and FP&A. Plans flow instantaneously between finance and merchandise departments, enabling the most-informed users to simultaneously contribute to modeling their part of the weekly, monthly, or annual processes, and together analyze the impact to drive to the future.

Challenge

Retail planning processes are often voluminous and convoluted across teams, with inconsistent gaps and overlaps of point solutions delicately stitched together with Excel. This model bridges the gaps between departments by providing connectivity in a single solution for sales and inventory planning, allowing retail to incorporate short- and long-term merchandise planning with FP&A planning.

Approach

This model was specifically tailored to bring together three separate teams and better facilitate their collaboration: Corporate FP&A, Retail FP&A, Merchandise Planning & Allocation, and Product Strategy. Build the customer funnel across channels by integrating the financial plan for marketing spend, CPA, and customer behavior to determine customer lifetime value. Cascade the customer forecast to retail locations while the merchandise team builds its own bottom-up SKU forecast and assortment. Compare and contrast the two plans, align on goals, and build out the rest of the plan in the retail channel strategic plan; from store openings, renovations, staffing, product assortment, and new product introductions.

Key results

Benefits

Our client can now manage the financial planning and product lifecycle process all in one place, connecting the merchandise and finance team like never before. Transparency and connectedness will encourage more frequent planning at a more granular level of detail, resulting in increased accuracy and a positive impact on overall profitability.

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