Merchandise planning in a dynamic environment

Mighty helpful – Mitre10

Mitre10 has been a household name for over 50 years. With over 450 independent Mitre10 and True Value stores Australia-wide and supplying over 400 non-branded independent stores, Mitre10 is the second-largest player in the Australian home improvement and hardware industry.

“Jedox gives our planning team the tools to plan more intelligently, while giving us the flexibility to report and analyses easily and efficiently.”  

–Rob Pistritto, Commercial Manager, Mitre10 

The Mitre10 group comprises:

Australia ‘s only independent home improvement and hardware wholesaler to the industry.
An iconic independent and local retail network of over 450 Mitre10 and True Value Hardware stores.

Challenges

Unique community model calls for flexible planning solution
Demand fluctuations result in complex processes
Reports have to be updated manually

Independence and community focus 

Mitre10 stores are independently owned so it doesn’t dictate to each store how much to stock. As Commercial Manager, Rob Pistritto describes: “Mitre10 stores have a unique community model, meaning that we need to plan more like a wholesaler than a retailer.” 

Therefore, Mitre10 needed highly responsive merchandise planning that ensured stock arrived on time to the right store 

Planning in a dynamic environment

For some product lines, Mitre10 splits planning by sales types, product origin, and sales channel. In some cases, planning is also segmented to individual suppliers. With a fast-changing retail landscape and demand fluctuations, the complexity meant Mitre10 needed a flexible, responsive planning process. As Rob described, “a major problem with our existing monthly planning was that numbers continually moved. We’d print final reports, only to find the forecast had changed, which meant the whole process would be run again.” 

Frequent changes to the product family tree/product hierarchy meant that models were constantly rebuilt. Every change meant manual updates. 

Solution

End-to-end business solution for merchandise planning and reporting
Planning: stock levels, purchases, and margins with key indicators like stockturn, at any product level, for any time period
Weekly instead of monthly forecasting
Instant calculations, consolidations, top-down scenarios, and bottom-up re-forecasts

Mighty helpful DIY

Jedox solution seamlessly and rapidly integrated with Excel. The team empowered users through hands-on, workshop style training in a simulated real-world environment. The initial solution was implemented in under eight weeks. Business users’ Excel knowledge shortened the learning curve, so they could independently create ad-hoc analysis without heavy IT involvement.

Advantages

Flexible, responsive planning process
Seamless and rapid integration into Excel
Independent creation of ad-hoc analysis
More accurate and efficient planning, reporting and analysis
Fast deployment in less than 8 weeks

Responsiveness and efficiency

With the in-memory Jedox calculations, Mitre10 now has flexibility around the planning process with instant calculations, consolidations, top-down scenarios, and bottom-up re-forecasts.

Rob Pistritto explains:

Jedox gives our planning team the tools to plan more accurately and intelligently, while giving us the flexibility to report and analyse in a more efficient manner.” 

The team now spend time getting sales and inventory right rather than reconciling spreadsheets.

Why Jedox?

Business users’ Excel knowledge shortens learning curve
Minimal IT involvement
In-memory calculations with multidimensional OLAP engine
Personalised and role-based access

A unified solution 

Jedox is designed for business users, providing personalised and role-based access. It is user-focused, process-centric and unified and the solution enables highly responsive and tailored merchandise planning for Mitre10’s retail store network. This enables the stores to deliver on their community-focused strategy. As Rob notes:

“We can plan weekly, report monthly and analyse daily straight from Jedox. The team plan stock levels, purchases and margins with key indicators like stockturn instantly available, at any product level, for any time period.”

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