Store Clustering: Don't Leave Customers Out of the Planning Equation

Okay, you're a leader in planning. Your planning process takes into account demand forecasts, top-down financial goals, bottom-up product plans, assortments and multiple channels.

What's missing? The customer! Savvy planners are looking for ways to plug customer demographics and attributes into their forecasts, especially promotion and assortment plans. Now Manhattan Associates' Store Clustering gives planners the capabilities they have been seeking.

Store Clustering enables you to develop plans that are truly aligned to your customers' preference, no matter where they shop. Without an army of planners, you'll be able to create plans that group similar locations by performance, size, climate, customer demographics, store format or other measures or attributes. This means you can stock each location in the cluster with merchandise generating the highest potential profits.

How Store Clustering Works

First, define the cluster set with as much information as you wish. The key is to make sure your approach makes it easy to selecting and manage clusters. For maximum flexibility, you can set up unlimited layering of clusters and define clustering rules based on any performance measure.

Next, step back and let Store Clustering make your job easier. A few examples of its capabilities:

• Provides flexible location attributing that can be managed within the solution itself for consistency and accuracy
• Enables users to copy, edit and regenerate clusters as the business changes
• Supports new stores so you can cluster based on like history
• Interfaces with Assortment Planning so that you can build and manage assortments using unlimited attributes
• Interfaces with Promotion Planning to streamline the planning and execution of promotional events

Contact Information: To learn more about Manhattan Associates' supply chain solutions, simply complete the information request form, and we will contact you. For North & South America, call +1 877.596.9208 or e-mail info_americas@manh.com. For global inquiries, call +44 (0)1344 318000 or e-mail info_global@manh.com.