Arvato PSR - Planning, Controlling and Reporting
Multidimensional purchasing and distribution planning
Why Spreadsheets are Outdated
For the purchase planning in retail many retail companies still plan their assortment and merchandising specifications using spreadsheets. As a planning and control tool for inventory and its distribution, this approach has a number of significant disadvantages in planning handling, such as the inadequate implementation of multidimensionality, insufficient links between important operative areas, lack of transparency or more difficult area yield and module planning.
The solution for complex assortment and merchandising requirements in a wide variety of corporate structures
Arvato Systems has developed for this purchase planning in retail a standard application that is based on company-specific conditions and processes. This is becoming increasingly important, especially in Fashion Retail Planning, since fast reactions to changing consumer behavior require a homogeneous system landscape. Here, the user can design and configure the Arvato Systems application PSR (Planning - Control - Reporting) himself, depending, among other things, on a specific company environment.
Your Benefits
Arvato PSR
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The planning dimensions
The planning dimensions
Planning across all relevant instances, including central specifications top-down by, for example, management, central purchasing or e-commerce management
Plan values from decentralized units of responsibility (such as store management) can be supplemented in a complementary, bottom-up manner, thus rounding off the holistic planning process.
Users can also adjust the degree of granulation, for example, the
Merchandise and allocation planning, freely configurable.- Target total turnover
- Main product groups
- Product groups
- Categories
- Type/Style
- Brand
- Calculation or margin requirements and the resulting effects on earnings from these
These attributes are supplemented by freely dimensionable point of sales in their number and area divisions.
Clients can realize multidimensional planning or create different planning templates. This is useful, for example, for different planning processes of different distribution channels and, if necessary, different country variants.
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Control through plan comparison
Control through plan comparison
Once plan values have been specified by the respective areas of responsibility, either in absolute figures or as percentages of previous periods, an automatic change of all linked values takes place immediately. Quantities of goods are therefore immediately distributed to locations and distribution channels according to a previously defined set of rules. Thus, at any time, across any planning hierarchy and the previously defined degree of granulation, planning is transparent and comprehensible.
Since purchasing planning is never static over planning periods, but rather "moving-targets", this is taken into account by a rolling plan/actual comparison. Depending on the availability and provision of KPIs, actual values can be imported periodically on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis, for example, and visualized in comparison with the plan within the In-Season-Planning.
Deviations from long-term forecasts are often the result of factors such as changing consumer behaviour, short-term changes in trends, and even extraordinary influences such as weather, etc. In a further development of the PSR tool, AI will play an important role in planning and forecasting and will put planning targets in relation to such influences.
This rolling comparison enables the permanent control, identification and localisation of critical inventory levels. From this, the system can also make recommendations for countermeasures - be it replenishment planning, stock transfers or markdowns.This in-season control is supported on the one hand by the OTB module (open-to-buy), which helps those responsible for planning to readjust stock quantities in the In-Season planning, and on the other hand by a red-flag report, which visualizes plan deviations clearly.
In this way, reductions in overstock risks can be achieved while at the same time highlighting margin and sales losses which completes the purchase planning in retail. -
The Reporting
The Reporting
The PSR system is enhanced by several supervision options:
- Configurable reports
- Export capability of individual planning modules
- Management dashboard for planning status overview of freely definable purchasing and sales focal points.
