DATA SHEET

Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning enables

rapid assessment of strategic planning decisions

through hind-sighting, scenario planning, and

exception-based reporting.

The solution provides visibility to actual trends

and future plans across multiple channels and

product segments, so retailers can stay ahead of

the competition.

Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning uses industry

best practices to improve the quality of strategic

pre-season and in-season plans.

The unified suite encourages cross-functional

participation and accountability across

merchandise planning teams and roles.

Optimize financial plans and open-to-buy budgets with a flexible, accurate, and automated financial planning solution.

The solution gives retailers a flexible, accurate, and automated approach to financial planning. It is easy to use and implement and comes preconfigured with all of the key metrics needed to build a successful end-to-end retail planning process.

Users can plan multiple brands, channels, and currencies using the solution – all in a single view. In addition, Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning manages an organization’s open-to-buy budget, while giving retailers the ability to choose their own planning calendars and govern strategic plan targets across any time period.

The solution is unique in that it allows cost and retail metrics and processes to be used simultaneously, regardless of the organization’s accounting practices.

Additional features of the solution include a flexible planning grid similar to the spreadsheets users are accustomed to working in, core merchandise planning metrics, flexible hierarchies, scenario planning and version control, and a proven plan approval process and user workflow.

Scalable and flexible, Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning integrates seamlessly with the full suite of Mi9 Retail solutions and is available in the cloud or on premise.

Merchandising Financial Planning • DATA SHEET

Global Headquarters: 12000 Biscayne Blvd., Suite 600 | Miami, FL 33181 | USA | T: +1.786.577.3200

Mi9 Retail is the fastest growing provider of enterprise software for retailers, wholesalers, and brands. Mi9 enables the world’s leading retailers to automate and optimize their entire Plan-to-Sell™ process, from planning to executing, influencing, and selling merchandise in-store, online, and on any device. Mi9 corporate retail systems facilitate better planning, master data management, allocation, and replenishment, and Mi9 customer engagement and point-of-purchase systems boost revenue across digital and brick-and-mortar channels. Our solutions are connected via a common analytics framework that serves as the foundation of the system and speeds time to insight with role-based dashboards, KPIs, and governed self-service data discovery. Mi9 Retail is committed to helping retailers on their path to success, so they can maximize revenue and customer engagement while minimizing costs. Visit www.mi9retail.com to learn more.

Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning offers an intuitive, strategic view of the financial plan and product hierarchy, complete with configurable metrics and units of measure to help you manage your business. With drill-down capabilities and the ability to adjust plans at any level, Merchandise Financial Planning makes it easy to plan, track, and manage financial forecasts.

Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning is delivered with standard industry standard best-practices based metrics. Users can easily add additional metrics by dragging and dropping them into the planning grid to configure whatever planning view they want. For those needing something more advanced, the solution offers hundreds of advanced metrics to meet the needs of even the most sophisticated organizations.

Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning supports top-down, middle-out and bottom-up planning, including top-down financial plans, bottom-up Category Plans, Store Plans, as well as the ability to plan, by vendor. Each planning type can be created independently allowing for different roles within the merchandising organization to create their own versions of the plan. Plans can then be compared and reconciled from the top down or bottoms up. Planners can lock and spread adjustments at any product, location, or time-level of the plan.

Location and category Planning automatically balances and reconciles location and merchandise plans in order to measure category performance at a location level and generate more accurate store clusters. Location and category planning is used extensively by fast fashion and category-focused retailers in managing the allocation of products.

No business should operate without monitoring its inventory spend within the cash flow cycle. Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning helps you monitor inventory investment within any period of time or any part of the product hierarchy. Having the appropriate level of visibility to your open-to-buy enables you to track the amount available to spend on additional receipts or to cut back on receipts not necessary within your organization’s merchandise plan. For ease of use, the open-to-buy capability works hand-in-hand with the strategic merchandise financial planning target setting process.

Mi9 Merchandise Financial Planning provides the capability for users to do “what-if” scenario planning across all plan types. Each user can independently work through their scenarios in order to create the plan that makes the most sense in aligning with the trends of the business. Users can create their own independent branches from the master plan with full control to create further scenarios, if necessary. This method allows for workflow control over the planning process, which ensures that users are not making adjustments directly into the master plan.

Additionally, users can quickly compare multiple versions against each other to gain a clear picture of how the plans change and move over time. Once a scenario is approved, the user simply merges that scenario into the master plan and that version becomes the new approved plan. User rights control the work and approval flow of the planning. This allows for workflow control over the planning process and ensures that there is one approved version of the plan that the organization is working towards.

Core merchandise planning metrics

Scenario planning and version control

Target setting process and workflows

Retail and cost methods of accounting supported

Integrated reporting

Advanced metrics related to weeks of supply, margin return on investment, regular price business, promotional business and clearance business

Location planning at more granular levels of the product hierarchy

Automated reconciliation between product and location plans

Ability to manage new store and closing store plans