With approximately 50,000 SKUs across five product lines, the level of complexity is high. Until now, Excel-based planning has led to inefficiencies, manual data verification and limited visibility into financial and inventory planning. “We were looking to improve our efficiency in planning speed and the ability to drill down a lot more than Excel can,” says Eric Champagne, CIO at la Vie en Rose. “There isn’t enough governance around Excel and we aren’t confident in the accuracy of our information, so we’re always verifying the data. That’s the main reason we are going with an open to buy/merchandise financial planning system; we want to spend more time growing the business rather than working on spreadsheets.”
To find the right platform, la Vie en Rose conducted a full Request for Proposal (RFP) process, evaluating six different vendors, through demos, a comprehensive questionnaire and a 250-item-requirement list. Ultimately, Centric Planning stood out due to its deep retail expertise, integrated approach and ability to create a single source of truth for planning.
La Vie en Rose will leverage two key capabilities within Centric Planning:
- Merchandise Financial Planning – aligning financial targets with in-season execution, enabling data-driven decision-making to maximize top-line and bottom-line performance.
With merchandise financial planning, the company can set accurate financial targets and translate them into sales and margin plans. Buy targets can be aligned to merchandise receipts and stock projections. Champagne explains, “We need accurate information to make good decisions based on outcomes. We want to get the tools in place so we can focus on bigger things. Doing store planning on numbers which we can link back to merchandise financial planning is pretty cool. It will streamline the process between finance, between merchandise planning and also the procurement side of the business.” A single source of truth means that the data is true, so no longer needs to be verified, freeing up time to focus on optimizing in-season.
By adopting Centric Planning, la Vie en Rose expects “to reduce overstock, optimize markdowns as much as possible and make sure we can respond to the market,” Champagne notes. “Our intent is to get the right product to the right place on time. We are excited to see how the Centric platform—specifically the item planning portion of the Assortment Strategy module—will aid us in ensuring accurate sales forecasts and the necessary inventory flows to advance our key item business.” The assortment strategy aligns financial targets with what the assortments will look like and quantifies the number of options.
Other advantages of Centric Planning are end-to-end visibility, data-driven agility and AI-powered insights to optimize financial performance, align assortments with market demand and drive profitable, customer-centric decision-making at scale.
“We are thrilled to welcome la Vie en Rose to the Centric Software family,” says President of Centric Software, Fabrice Canonge. “With Centric Planning, la Vie en Rose’s teams will gain the agility, visibility and accuracy needed to navigate today’s fast-changing retail landscape. We are excited to see their success.”
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La Vie en Rose (http://www.lavieenrose.com)
Founded in 1985, la Vie en Rose has become Canada’s leading lingerie and swimwear retailer since its acquisition by François Roberge in 1996. The Montréal-based company, which employs more than 4,600 people, now has more than 400 stores worldwide – including over 300 in Canada and USA – under two distinct brands: la Vie en Rose and Bikini Village. la Vie en Rose is a true Canadian success story. Since 2004, it has continued to expand around the world, with 110 stores in 17 countries. The la Vie en Rose brand targets consumers looking for quality, affordable underwear, lingerie, loungewear, sleepwear, swimwear and beachwear. Bikini Village is the destination of choice for an exceptional selection of swimwear, beachwear and high-quality accessories for women and men. Bikini Village is proud to work with over 100 leading international brands.
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Aurore Evee, Centric Software, +16479155377, [email protected], www.centricsoftware.com
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