Recover from post-pandemic data & sales loss with smart merchandising

The Economist, in 2017, referred to data as “new oil”, the one ingredient every business needs to drive the world ahead. Covid, classified as a “black swan” event, shook the entire social and economic status quo, and further emphasized the importance of intelligent data analysis and smart decision-making. Brands and retailers had to take a fresh look at strategy and planning. Digital sales channels took precedence over offline stores enabling brands to take an omnichannel approach. Planning an efficient supply chain, to get the right product at the right time to the right person, became imperative.

Data analytics helps make strategic business calls and design processes, thus building supply chain efficiency, and fostering innovations. Businesses need to rely on data analytics to make quick business decisions in weeks, rather than months. 

Increff smart Merchandising Solution – MS-Pro and MS-enterprise, is making strides in data analytics as diverse data is processed by patented algorithms to produce downloadable reports that can be visualized in UI.

• Descriptive data analysis is provided through Business Intelligence dashboards. Here, dynamic performance analysis can be done with visualization techniques over historical data.
• Predictive analytics is used to identify past sales, revenue, discounting, sell-through, and other factors from past data to predict future behavior.

It helps in accurate demand planning and distribution to ensure the right products reach the right customers at the right time. A 10-20% improvement in demand forecasting can reduce 5% of the inventory cost, which as per McKinsey and Company, contributes to up to a 2% to 3% increase in revenue.

The pandemic influenced how people perceived and purchased products which were reflected in the drastic switch in brands with fluctuating demands. This dynamism was important to capture with data analytic tools so brands can identify buying patterns and capitalize on them.

Increff smart merchandising solution is designed to adapt and grow with the changes in the market.

• Results can be produced season-wise or period-wise depending on the purchasing and distribution pattern of the brand or retailer. It occupies budget crunches or expansions and optimizes accordingly. 
• Dynamic data-churning help cut down the length of production cycles and adapt to quick changes in the market.
• It gives the option to pick and choose an analysis period where a considerable amount of data is available. Data gaps can be identified while analyzing the data from similar seasons or sales periods that can be used to replace them.

• Ability to measure a set of attributes to track the performance of particular products and forecast demands accurately. This can be derived from the few basic sets of data, available with all brands. From here the tool can churn out right from planning to distribution to online analytics.
• The UI is clutter free and designed to create easy access for everyone. Easy usage cuts down man hours to a few minutes and enables the team to have maximum flexibility.
• Tools account for spikes and ridges in sales and smooth out any irregularity, thus making the results more accurate and avoiding false positives due to any season-end sales or extreme dips due to temporary shutdowns.
• Modules such as regional utilization and Inter-store transfer help to cut down on logistic time-cost and increase efficiency in supply chains. This would help your business stay afloat even in sudden supply chain disruptions. Tuning Inter-store transfer with the tool will eliminate human delays as well.

Intelligent Increff Merchandising Solution helps retailers put their best foot forward when it comes to planning inventory and allocation. The adaptable and dynamic nature of the tool helps brands cope with the natural data loss, similar to what happened due to business shutdowns during the pandemic, and take calculated decisions for steady business growth.