The Forrester Wave™: Retail Planning Solutions, Q2 2014

Retailers' profitability has always depended on the ability to turn inventory fast, since inventory is the principal asset on their balance sheets. Nothing influences inventory turn as much as effective planning to put the right combinations of attractive merchandise items in the right store or channel at the right time and right price. In the age of the customer, dominated by customer choice, retailers' ability to plan compelling assortments across channels and stores is more important than ever. In Forrester's 80-criteria evaluation of retail planning solution vendors, we identified the 10 most significant software providers in the category —Epicor, IBM, JDA Software, JustEnough, Micros, Oracle, SAP, SAS, 7thonline, and SPI— and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report details our findings about how well each vendor fulfills our criteria and where they stand in relation to each other, to help application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals select the right partner and solution cross-channel retail planning for rapidly expanding ranges of short product life-cycle merchandise.