Part of Oracle's extensive family of retail solutions, Advanced Inventory Planning creates constraint–based replenishment and allocation plans across any time horizon, then converts those plans into orders, transfers, load builds, and transportation schedules.

Now, planned new features will enable retailers to plan not just by store and SKU 180 days out, but also for demand every single day over that entire period.

And Advanced Inventory Planning will build replenishment plans that take into account not just suppliers and warehouses but also other stores, so excess inventory is rapidly transformed into profitable stock.

"Advanced Inventory Planning changes the economics of retailing by performing literally billions of calculations to determine the best way to plan and replenish stores with respect to customer service levels and inventory productivity goals," says Kevin Sterneckert, senior director of strategy, Oracle Merchandise Planning and Optimization Solutions.

Advanced Inventor Planning has already helped British retailer Argos achieve a 2 full-point improvement for in–stock position and reduce the amount of inventory in the supply chain by US$25 million, according to Sterneckert.

More Granular Planning
As consumer service expectations rise, it is increasingly vital to have stock available as soon as customers are ready to buy—or risk losing the sale altogether.

The ability to plan day–by–day six months in advance makes it far easier to meet demand without overinvesting in inventory.

In fact, the efficiencies retailers can wring from this combination of granular information and long lead times are profound, including timely and sufficient delivery from suppliers, optimized staffing decisions, maximum returns on inventory and other capital investments, and more predictable performance for Wall Street.

Sell What You Already Own
By capturing signals more frequently and closer to the point of sale, planned features of Advanced Inventory Planning will enable replenishment on the fly.

If, for example, red widgets are selling out in the Midwest, while the green version is all the rage in the South, planned features in Advanced Inventory Planning will "sense" these differences far more quickly, predict how this will affect sales over any given timeframe, and then develop the most profitable replenishment plan to meet that demand.

The principle applies even at the store level. For example, if red widgets are selling in West Side stores, Advanced Inventory Planning can locate excess red widgets in East Side stores—and then determine the most efficient way to move them to the West Side.

Price Versus Service Versus Profit
Once the right quantities of a particular SKU are determined for a specific time and channel, Advanced Inventory Planning determines not just the cheapest replenishment strategy, or the fastest, but the most profitable.

Besides the ability to take a global view of inventory sources—multiple suppliers, warehouses, and stores—planned features of Advanced Inventory Planning will measure both item price and shipping costs for each option, then compare this against the opportunity cost if the item is not available for purchase at a given time.

"The result: replenishment decisions based not on cost or service alone, but bottom–line profitability," concludes Sterneckert.