Multi-category Retailers
Optimize Assortments and Launch More Successful Products, Faster in Multi-Category Retail
Cut time to market, lower COGS and launch new SKUs at scale with collaborative, unified development cycles.
Satisfy consumers across markets with real-time intelligence and AI-powered insight while cutting discounts and inventory.
Track, develop and manage assortments and pricing within in a single platform. Leverage AI-powered insight to create modern omnichannel experiences that satisfy rapidly evolving consumer tastes.
Global brands, retailers and manufacturers create, launch and commercialize better products at higher margins with Centric Planning & Pricing.
Multi-category retail is evolving fast. Stay up to speed with Centric PLM.
REMOVE BOTTLENECKS TO SPEED TIME TO MARKET
Connect product, sourcing, merchandising and retail teams and suppliers with one real-time source of actionable truth in a collaborative digital portal to get to market faster.
INCREASE PRODUCT INTRODUCTION SUCCESS
Centralize merchandise development plans and track in-season progress to optimize assortments. Sandbox what-if scenarios, analyze competitive styles and get closer to consumers.
STREAMLINE SUPPLIER COLLABORATION
Connect suppliers with PLM through the vendor portal. Issue RFPs and compare responses en masse to save time and develop original products with your suppliers’ expertise.
LOWER COGS AND IMPROVE PRODUCT MARGINS
Empower high-volume and direct to factory sourcing, directly compare suppliers, streamline material buying and launch innovative products faster to maximize assortment value.
DELIVER DESIRABLE, HIGH QUALITY PRODUCTS
Protect brand reputation with refined quality control tools and mobile apps to ensure quality doesn’t slip with the accelerating pace and volume of new product introductions.
OPTIMIZE CUSTOMER IN-STORE EXPERIENCE
Conduct onsite retail reviews at retail locations using the Retail Review app to ensure every in-store experience aligns with brand values and product presentation guidelines.
LAUNCH MORE SKUS
Manage thousands of SKUs and multiple categories at once to drive new products. Quickly review design proposals or prototypes. Efficiently manage design and sample requests.
EASILY CALCULATE COSTS
Quickly calculate and compare supplier costs, product margins and pricing. For retailer Ackermans, margin calculations now take seconds, not weeks since implementing Centric PLM.
Selling everything from footwear to food, retailers trust Centric PLM
Combining Excel spreadsheets was time consuming and included a huge amount of scope for error, meaning that decisions being made were not based on accurate information. In Centric, a single button click gets us real-time intelligence that we can use to make informed decisions.
After using Centric for a couple of seasons things have completely changed, communication across teams became a lot smoother. People can rely on the information they get and really focus their energy on being more efficient and creative
Today, it is not possible to thrive without a foundational tool like Centric PLM... We will continue to adjust the portfolio for each business unit thanks to Centric PLM.
How does Centric PLM work for multi-category retail teams?
Centric PLM connects product planning, development, sourcing, manufacturing and retail placement teams in the same digital space with the most up-to-date and accurate ‘single source of actionable truth’ to get a wider variety of products to more markets and more channels faster.
USER-FRIENDLY PORTAL
Browser-based portal with intuitive Excel-like interface. Slack integration enables social collaboration. Retain talent with the right tools and the highest user adoption rate (100%) in the industry.
PERSONALIZED DASHBOARDS
Configure views, dashboards, reports and analytics according to job function. Slice and dice data to see the most relevant and actionable information. Enable multi-dimensional merchandise planning.
STREAMLINE PROCESSES
Define processes with built-in workflows, task hand-offs and notifications so nothing falls through the cracks. Reduce clicks and get rid of siloed data storage to get jobs done smarter and faster.
VISUAL SANDBOX ENVIRONMENT
For internal design, re-inspired design, market buying or all these - play with ideas, define themes and start building collections with collaborative, visual, tactile digital workspaces.
CHECK PRODUCTS & PACKAGING
Enable quality assurance and product inspections with Final Inspection. Copy/Graphic Proofing empowers teams to develop, iterate on and proof packaging copy and artwork in an error-free workflow.
RAPID PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Create templates to quickly start developing new products based on similar items. Link competitive analysis, images, web copy, videos, financial data, PIM data and more.
A Seamless experience from pre-season to in-season to end of season
Discover Centric’s Market-Driven Solutions
Invest in highly-configurable, out-of-the-box and easy-to-use modular solutions to optimize every step of bringing a product to market.
Centric PLM
Flexible, modular PLM solution with built-in retail best practices. Digital transformation platform connecting teams from concept to replenishment with collaborative, cloud-based, mobile technology.
Centric Planning
Empower accurate and dynamic financial forecasting, merchandising, assortment and in-season planning. Maximize business performance, reduce excess inventory by up to 60% and improve operating margins by 110%.
Centric Pricing & Inventory
Capitalize on product seasonality and boost profitability and forecasting accuracy with AI-enhanced predictive pricing and inventory. Increase sales by up to 18% and gross profit by 4%.
Centric Market Intelligence
Gain insights into competitor assortment and pricing strategies, understand consumer trends and buying behavior and spot market opportunities.
Centric Visual Boards
Connect teams remotely or at the office to make collaborative, actionable decisions with visual digital boards. Ideate designs, run buying sessions and showroom presentations and optimize assortments.
Centric PXM
Deliver the best product experience with AI-powered PXM including PIM, DAM, content syndication and digital shelf analytics (DSA). Increase sales channels, boost sell through and drive margins.
Why do multi-category retailers need PLM as a foundation for digital transformation?
The retail industry has been transformed forever. Consumer behaviour is changing, as digital disruptors and direct to consumer models offer seamless online experiences and easy, fast home delivery. Large online retailers are competing in every category, and evolving tariff agreements can create sudden import/export headaches.
This new state of retail demands demands ‘more’. More categories, more original products, more seasons. Time to market is shrinking and product portfolios are globalized, making them difficult to manage. Every SKU is under pressure to be profitable and the margin of error has shrunk. Success in a season dictates up to 90% of revenue attainment for retailers.
Despite all of these changes, one simple truth remains. Great products are at the heart of retail.
Digital transformation with PLM software puts products front and center and improves communication, collaboration, quality, sustainability, compliance and brand management to solve these challenges, and more.
Drive sustainable business practices with Centric PLM
Our solutions empower retailers to implement, track and report on compliance, material/ingredient origins and initiatives that have a positive impact on the world. Successful sustainability policies deliver increased sales and brand loyalty among consumers who seek transparency and choose consciously.
Frequently asked questions
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the digital technology that links every aspect of retail from product concept/design brief to supplier quotes to stores, wholesale and e-commerce with a single source of up-to-date, reliable product information. Everyone from product designers to merchandisers to manufacturers aligns, reducing time to market and costs.
Read more in our blog: What is PLM Software
Retail PLM dramatically improves collaboration, information quality, product quality, product compliance and time management across the business so you can focus on getting more products to market, faster. Retail PLM is essential for healthy product diversity efficient, global communication and transparency, with a transformational effect on everything from compliance to quality to innovation. It even helps manage tariffs, changing costs and fluctuating exchange rates.
Retail PLM is the foundation of digital transformation as PLM manages the heart of any retail business (multi-channel retailing, omni-channel retailing or omni-retail); products & people. Boost product innovation, drive supply chain efficiencies, reduce waste, speed the pace of product introductions and a whole lot more!
PLM drives retail & digital transformation to ensure brand longevity by helping retailers to increase product introduction success, streamline private/white label and co-created product development, improve product margins with high-volume sourcing, deliver high-quality, desirable products and maintain brand consistency. PLM also includes a change management component to ensure that teams are fully aligned.
To get ahead of the competition and manage change, retailers need strong, easy to use digital tools. Retail PLM makes it easier to optimize assortments faster, streamline product sourcing and ensure that quality standards are upheld as product volume increases. Whether creating apparel, fashion, footwear, furniture, packaged foods, cosmetics or any other type of fast-moving consumer goods, the right PLM offers universal benefits.
Get up to speed with 5 ways PLM empowers retail transformation
Leading brands and retailers are executing digital transformation strategies and applying innovative technologies such as touchscreens, mobile apps, artificial intelligence and micro-services to get closer to consumers, increase product innovation and variety, offer made-to-measure options and become more agile.
Changes outside of your control will happen and you need to be able to react quickly. Tariffs are one of those situations. Centric Retail PLM helps retailers be more agile in the face of changing economic conditions such tariffs, raw materials pricing, exchange rates and more.
Find out how US footwear company Cobian uses Centric Retail PLM to tackle tariffs on goods from China
In the rush to embrace consumer-facing digital innovations, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics of retail: the products you sell. Centric Retail PLM empowers your ‘back of house’ teams, digitally transforming the process of planning assortments and creating, sourcing and launching products, and connects product development with buyers, merchandisers and sales teams for a smooth, fast workflow.
Merchandise planning in retail PLM provides merchandisers with the accurate and up-to-date information they need to develop financial plans, structure new collections, efficiently carry over styles from previous seasons and collaborate with design, product development, sourcing and buying teams. Merchandisers can stop guessing and make decisions based on accurate, actionable information. Skip the spreadsheets forever!
See it in action in our Merchandise Planning webinar discussion and demo
Use retail PLM to track and manage compliance with complex regulations and quality requirements, fight margin pressure with streamlined sourcing practices, drive high-volume sourcing, collaborate with suppliers and source from a single platform with up-to-date supplier and materials information. Even factory audits and product quality can be managed via Centric PLM mobile apps with information instantly shared with product teams to be able to take swift corrective action.
Digital collaboration is just what it sounds like – collaboration using digital tools and information. Innovative collaboration technologies like PLM break down information silos, connect teams in the same office or around the world, enhance communication with suppliers, leverage knowledge from all product related contributors and help optimize time.
Discover how Fashion, Retail & Consumer Goods Brands Reap Big Rewards from Digital Collaboration
Yes! Retailers use PLM to directly track the environmental and social impact of the creation of each product, improve visibility to effectively assess whether sustainability initiatives are working and manage compliance programs, ensuring adherence to social and guidelines internally and in the supply chain as well as more transparency for consumers.