{"id":2826,"date":"2017-11-08T18:23:16","date_gmt":"2017-11-09T02:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/industry\/blog\/uncategorized\/transform-retail-with-todays-advanced-planning-solutions\/"},"modified":"2023-07-03T14:34:42","modified_gmt":"2023-07-03T21:34:42","slug":"transform-retail-with-todays-advanced-planning-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/industry\/blog\/retail\/2017\/11\/08\/transform-retail-with-todays-advanced-planning-solutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Transform Retail with Today’s Advanced Planning Solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
Retailers have long struggled with bridging the gap between supply and demand. Even after decades of collecting point-of-sale and loyalty program data, retailers are data-rich yet insight-poor\u2014lacking the real-time information needed to make agile buying and assortment decisions that give them a competitive edge.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Good news. The ability to harness the power of your data, to more easily identify and enable opportunities locked away in these data sources, is now here with the latest innovations in advanced planning solutions.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Featuring machine learning capabilities, today\u2019s planning software empower merchants with predictive and prescriptive insights to balance price and inventory at a hyper-local level. The solutions assess shopping and market insights along with external data such as weather, store traffic, and social signals, empowering merchants to quickly understand what customers want, how much they want to pay, and when they want it. Talk about tightening your supply and demand gap!<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In this tough environment, we\u2019re finding at Microsoft that retail and consumer goods companies are eager for the digital transformation that retail analytics can deliver. Industry leaders agree. Eighty-eight percent of retail CIOs believe advanced analytics will have the greatest impact on their organizations over the next five years, according to a 2017 Gartner CIO Survey<\/a>.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Where are the biggest opportunities for retail analytics? Gartner research<\/a> suggests pretty much every inch of your enterprise: marketing, merchandising, pricing, distribution, store operations, and every other internal process in between.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
[inlinequote]\u201cUltimately, retailers will need the ability to decide in a split second if an opportunity is potentially desirable or undesirable in favor of the next momentary opportunity. Retailers will leverage Big Data, advanced analytics, and algorithms to enable these decisions with greater accuracy and timely execution of customer-facing processes.\u201d – Robert Hetu, Research Director, Gartner[\/inlinequote]<\/div>\n

Creating personal, engaging and relevant experiences<\/h2>\n
\n
At Microsoft we understand the urgency of turning your data into actionable insights. Yet pinpointing the factors that make retail products desirable in a specific market or channel has been no easy task. Fortunately, our engineers and partners are always up for a challenge. Leveraging our technology expertise and industry experience, Microsoft\u2019s advanced planning solutions provide a retail analytics and visualization platform for your buyers to make optimal purchase decisions to drive product profitability.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
What can you expect with the latest planning software? To start, you can expect our solutions to complement your existing inventory control systems, while delivering state-of-the-art, near real-time capabilities. For example, dashboards enable your buyers to drill into each market or product segments with tailored machine learning recommendations. By making it easier for your people to connect, share information and work together across organizational and geographical boundaries, they can more effectively perform in an increasingly competitive digital marketplace.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Walmart-owned Jet.com transforms e-commerce<\/h2>\n
\n
To understand how Microsoft solutions for advanced planning can work in your environment, let\u2019s look at some examples of retail success. A great place to start is with online retailer, Jet.com. Its founder and CEO Marc Lore saw an opportunity in 2014 to transform ecommerce by focusing and innovating around price. Truly an ecommerce pioneer, Lore\u2019s strategy is brilliant.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By giving customers unprecedented control at checkout, Jet.com customers can watch the price of items in their basket drop in real time, based on selections that affect the actual costs of that particular transaction\u2014product warehouse location, items in a shipment, payment method, returns and more. For example, customers can waive the right to return certain items or pay directly from a checking account to save more money.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
To make its vision for dynamic pricing possible, Jet.com turned to Microsoft in 2015 and, more specifically, Microsoft Azure<\/a> as the foundation for their Smart Cart and Rules Engine technology. Our solution delivers everything Jet.com needs to shake up the online shopping industry\u2014a secured cloud platform with the stability and maturity to handle the demands of large volumes of data and a rapidly expanding customer base.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Providing the Microsoft cloud technology for Jet.com to grow from zero to a full-fledge ecommerce marketplace in about 12 months was a thrill. Another cool fact: Walmart acquired Jet.com for $3.3 billion a mere 13 months after the site\u2019s launch. Their latest initiatives include the launch of a private-label brand, called Uniquely J, to win over urban-millennial customers. Want to learn how it all began for Jet.com? Read our case study<\/a> and check out this video<\/a> for an inspirational ecommerce success.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
[inlinequote]\u201cTo be one of the best e-commerce destinations in the US, we will have to handle millions of customers, placing tens of thousands of orders a day. That requires a top-class e-commerce system built on a flexible, open cloud platform. That is exactly what we got with Azure.\u201d – Mike Hanrahan, CTO, Jet.com[\/inlinequote]<\/div>\n

Improving the customer experience with machine learning<\/h2>\n
Another e-commerce retailer improving the customer experience with retail analytics is Hamburg, Germany-based OTTO. Our partner Blue Yonder, a leading provider of machine learning solutions for retail, uses Microsoft Azure as its primary cloud and data platform to power OTTO\u2019s automated replenishment and pricing decisions.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
OTTO\u2019s revolutionary approach to advanced planning with Blue Yonder Replenishment Optimization<\/a> is creating phenomenal outcomes. And, no surprise, they\u2019re garnering lots of attention such as this April 2017 profile in The Economist<\/a> which cited OTTO\u2019s results including:<\/div>\n