Improving Store Merchandising

Merchandising is all about having the right products on the shelf when the consumer walks in the door, having appropriate displays to attract the consumer's attention to the merchandise, and being able to quickly and profitably replenish the products as they are sold. RedPrairie can assist in each of these areas.

Aside from trying to predict what the next big fashion trend or hot item will be, having the right products on the shelf entails immediate visibility into what products are selling at each location. RedPrairie's store level inventory management system tied into POS data provides a continuous picture of which items are selling at which stores, enabling better merchandising decisions and reducing stock-outs and overstocks at the store level. This capability is the front end of RedPrairie's consumer driven, end-to-end (E2e™) retail operations and supply chain optimization suite.

To support price optimization strategies and for consistency of customer experience, retail chains often require merchandise to be priced, displayed and reset according to corporate guidelines. But this assumes the workers at each store are properly trained on pricing policies, set up of end-caps and displays, or merchandise resets. It also requires store managers to properly schedule workers for both traffic-driven and task-driven activities to ensure the work is completed on a timely basis without interfering with peak traffic times.

RedPrairie's Learning Management application and e-Courses ensure workers at all levels are properly trained in a timely and efficient manner on all in-store tasks. And RedPrairie's Workforce Scheduling and Task Optimization capabilities make it easy for store managers to fold corporate requirements such as pricing, display set up and resets into the daily and weekly staffing schedules for each worker. As a result, merchandise presentation is consistent across store locations and all corporate-directed pricing and promotional tasks are completed efficiently at times that do not interfere with prime traffic hours.

Also critical is timely and accurate replenishment of stock at each store. RedPrairie's merchandise replenishment capabilities ensure the products customers want are always available when they walk in the door.