IDC MarketScape names Centric Software a Leader in retail merchandise financial planning
IDC named Centric Software® a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Retail Merchandise Financial Planning Solutions 2026 Vendor Assessment. Centric built merchandise financial planning for planners, finance teams and merchants: one connected plan across all three teams.
Most retailers set a sound financial plan before the season starts. Within weeks, demand has moved, costs have shifted and the plan describes a business that no longer exists. Merchandise financial planning earns its value in what happens next. Merchandise financial planning is part of Centric Planning & Pricing™, a cloud-native solution powered by Centric AI. It keeps sales, margin and open-to-buy targets steering weekly buying, pricing and inventory decisions all season. Customers measure the difference in margin, cycle time and inventory.
What customers see
GUESS Europe used Centric Planning & Pricing to lift operating margin from 5.6% to 12%. The company cut its retail planning cycle from one month to one week and reduced excess inventory by 60%.
Fashion retailer About You describes the change in planners' own terms: "We are now able to synchronize bottom-up and top-down planning processes, everything is linked together."
What Merchandise Financial Planning does
Merchandise Financial Planning connects financial, merchandise and demand plans in one environment. Plans reflect strategy and live performance at the same time. Five capabilities make that possible:
One plan from boardroom target to channel. Top-down financial goals align with bottom-up category, channel and assortment plans. Planners, merchants and finance work from one version of the financial truth.
A plan that stays current. Demand, cost, pricing and trading signals feed the plan continuously. Teams reforecast in-season without rebuilding models by hand.
Open-to-buy (OTB) under control. Automated OTB management keeps investment and liquidity on plan. Teams reduce overbuying and free up cash for the categories with the strongest opportunity.
Scenarios in minutes. Teams model best, base and worst cases. Guardrails keep margin and financial discipline intact while teams explore options.
Explainable outcomes. The margin impact of a pricing, promotion or investment decision is visible before it reaches the P&L. Planners can show leadership why the plan changed.
Where financial plans break
Without that connection, plans break in the same ways across fashion, footwear, outdoor, home and multi-category retail:
Top-down targets and bottom-up category plans live in different files and drift apart.
Scenario modeling depends on spreadsheets, so reforecasting takes days while the season keeps moving.
The plan stops at the buy. Pricing, allocation and replenishment decisions happen elsewhere, and their margin impact reaches finance too late.
The result is a team that reforecasts constantly and still misses targets.
The financial spine of Centric Planning & Pricing
Centric Planning & Pricing unifies planning, pricing and inventory optimization from pre-season through in-season execution. Merchandise financial planning sets the targets and guardrails the rest of the solution follows:
Assortment Strategy & Planning turns financial targets into ranges, balancing SKU depth, mix and localization against margin expectations.
Demand Forecasting combines internal performance with external demand and trend signals. Buying levels reflect what customers are likely to buy.
Allocation & Replenishment sends stock to the stores, regions and channels where demand is strongest.
Lifecycle Pricing & Optimization uses explainable AI to guide initial, promotional and markdown pricing.
Connected planning keeps margin visible to finance all season. When a markdown decision changes the margin outlook, the financial plan shows it. When the plan shifts an OTB position, buying and allocation respond. Finance, planning, merchandising and trading teams act on the same numbers.
Context that makes the plan credible
Two more connections tie the plan to market and product data.
Centric Market Intelligence™ tracks competitor offers, pricing and consumer trends. Plan assumptions then start from the current market instead of last season's results.
Centric PLM™ and Centric Visual Boards™ link the plan to product development and assortment decisions. Financial goals tie to real bill-of-materials structures, material prices and supplier quotes. Teams build feasible strategies from the first draft. Cost or lead-time issues surface while there is still time to act.
Three tests for your current plan
Time how long it takes to model the margin impact of a change. If the answer is days, the plan is too slow for the season.
Count how often you reforecast and note why. Frequent reforecasting signals a plan disconnected from execution.
Find where the plan and the in-season decisions diverge. That gap is where margin leaks.
