The retail buyer has the responsibility for understanding emerging trends, selecting merchandise and negotiating with the vendor. The right blend of reliable information, market knowledge and experience enables the buyer to arrive at a sound buying decision. While buyers can rely on their market knowledge and intuition, they can’t always depend on having reliable information at hand, especially at the time when it will be most beneficial.
The Purchasing module of Buyer’s WorkMate supports various methods and opportunities for the evaluation and selection of vendor merchandise both in concert with and independent of the assortment plan. The buyer also gets the opportunity to re-model the expected performance of the vendor specific merchandise across selected store groups using the latest performance data. Additionally, the full capabilities of the Buyer’s WorkMate Purchasing module are available to the buyer as a “standalone” laptop-based application or when they are connected to their corporate network.
Once an order or group of orders is in balance, finalized and authorized, the purchase order can be uploaded to the transaction processing system (remote or on-line), faxed or electronically transmitted to vendor (EDI).
Key Functions
Utilize Imported Style Level Assortment Plan as “Buy Plan” for PO.
Analyze and Evaluate Vendor Merchandise within the context of the Plan
Product Catalog integration allows for automated update of product information (UPC, etc.) from Vendor Catalog or 3rd Party Catalog services.
Evaluate Purchasing Decisions from Location Perspective.
Develop Pack Requirements using sophisticated Size Optimization (Pack Layering and Pack Optimization) Capabilities.
Review Open to Buy & Adjust Purchase Orders.
Automatic Generation of Purchase Orders Significantly reduces Buyer’s Administrative.
Workload via the automated integration to the retailer’s Host Transaction Processing System.
Key Features
Import the Assortment Plan
The detail of the assortment plan, for example: department/class/style/color can be imported into the PO Worksheet process of Buyer’s WorkMate’s Purchasing to form the basis of the buy.
The PO Worksheet serves as the “road map” for the buyer to determine what they need to buy within the constraints of the plan and their open-to-buy.
Within the Worksheet process, the buyer simply needs to indicate the specific style(s) they have selected which satisfy the requirements of the assortment plan.
Sizing and Allocation Capabilities
The allocation to stores and sizes can be handled automatically via the application of pre-defined allocation tables or as the result of the import from the assortment plan if it was split by store.
The merchandise order quantities can be automatically broken out by size via the application of size grids and/or size contribution tables.
The size grids & size contribution tables are store sensitive and can vary by department and class.
These grids and tables can be built within the WorkMate application, or imported from the SPIN decision support module.
Alternatively the buyer can manually enter the quantities by store and size or override the system-generated results.
Adjustments & Modeling
The buyer only has to identify specific product characteristics not previously anticipated in the assortment plan.
The buyer also gets the opportunity to remodel the expected performance of the vendor specific merchandise across selected store groups using the latest performance data.
New trend information might warrant overriding the assortment plan quantities.
The buyer has the opportunity to remain in balance from an overall standpoint and ensure that the open to buy will support individual or groups of orders to single or multiple vendors and for individual or multiple department/classes..
Purchase Order Creation
Once the buyer has completed the evaluation and selection phase within the Worksheet process they can very easily convert the worksheet into a purchase order.
All of the information that was developed will be exported to the PO process.
Once the worksheet becomes a Purchase Order the other information, such as vendor terms and delivery schedules can be entered.
At the completion of this phase of the process the Purchase Order is available for authorization and subsequent upload to the host transaction processing system.
Special Functions
Automatically accepts “BUY PLAN” which is fed by ITR Software’ Buyer’s WorkMate Assortment Planning application.
Automatically updates the Assortment Plan with the “on-order” amounts as a result of the purchase order process.
Technology
Based upon Windows® Open System Architecture platform with a familiar Windows interface to ensure compatibility, consistency and ease of use
Standard Microsoft® GUI Interface (Zoom, Drop/Dup, Move Rows/Columns, Copy/Paste, Drill Down etc.)
Once the data has been “seeded” onto the client, all setup and calculations can be performed on the client in a standalone mode. Server level processing is dependent upon the customer’s choice of operating environments and databases.
Stored procedures and referential integrity is inherent in the design of the WorkMate Purchasing product, provided the selected database supports these capabilities.
Two-Tier or Three-Tier Server Level Support
Database support for SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase etc.
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