Anaplan is a cloud-based technology that harnesses the power of statistical forecasting models to actuate alternative calendars and visualize market shifts. This is where Anaplan comes to the rescue for retail planners. Not to mention the nightmare that ensues if something is accidentally deleted and breaks your formulas or even the entire system.

Retail planners can waste an exorbitant amount of time just trying to obtain data before they are even able to analyze it.

Most big box systems are time-consuming, limited in insightful analysis, and prone to human error. If you're relying on big box planning systems or Excel, calendar planning can feel chaotic and difficult to manage due to the lack of flexibility, visibility, and access to historical data needed to predict dates and promotional activities. Balancing all of these different types of marketing shifts is necessary to prevent loss of revenue due to too much inventory, leading to heavy clearance, or out-of-stocks resulting in customer dissatisfaction and rushing orders. These key factors lead to huge variance in key selling items for retailers. For example, in northern states people are looking to escape the cold in warmer weather destinations, yet residents of southern states tend to take vacations in colder climates.

Spring break is another challenging event because depending on where you are in the country, markdowns and stock ups look very different. Easter can wreak havoc on your planning system.Īside from ‘Marpril’, retail planners need to anticipate other marketing shifts, such as the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, back-to-school, and how the COVID pandemic impacted promotional activity. This helps retail planners obtain a more complete picture of how it will affect your calendar planning for the beginning of the year. To combat the changing dates, most retail planners combine the months of March and April (Marpil), to visualize the Easter sales curve. The reason this is so frustrating for retail planners is that a moving holiday, like Easter, makes it difficult to know how early and late to take action pre- and -post holiday. Planners need to ensure they are balancing clearance with new stock ups to offset lost revenue from clearing out the Christmas items. Accounting for the variance in timing between Christmas and Easter is crucial in determining when to heavily clearance Christmas items, and stock upon foundational merchandise for spring. What makes the Easter holiday such a challenging period is that it is the earliest, and biggest selling curve of the year, yet Easter dates are not the same year to year. When it comes to Easter, that's where the term 'Marpil' comes into effect. Calendar Shift Challengesįamiliar calendar shifts in the USA include Thanksgiving, Christmas, back-to-school, spring break and Easter. With a planning technology like Anaplan, assortment planning becomes data-driven and efficient to properly forecast for changing calendar shifts throughout the year.

Calendar planning relies heavily on anticipating and accounting for calendar shifts throughout the assortment planner's assigned territory. With that said, calendar planning and anticipating seasonal shifts plays an important role in planning the product mix accurately and effectively.Įffective calendar planning and forecasting helps planners identify important time periods and peaks, understand early selling reads, periods when pricing action is needed, stocking up, setting clearance, identifying supply chain issues, and ensuring a good overall bottom line to reach gross margin goals. One of the key responsibilities retail planners have is assortment planning, which is forecasting and planning the proper items and inventory for their categories or stores at different times throughout the year. Retail planners are responsible for a wide range of duties, which often makes retail planning feel like a juggling act. Assortment Planning for Calendar Shifts with Anaplan

Assortment planner