Three (3) ways AI Can Find Your Winning Strategy for Your Next Product Line Review

How did you prepare for your last product line review (PLR)? How long did it take you to calculate, organize, and interpret market data and insight? What if you could build and present an effective retail strategy in minutes?

By using new Artificial intelligence (AI) technology, suppliers can present clearer results to their retailers. Suppliers are also able to prepare for retail client meetings by providing specific category management strategies that are quick, data-driven and transparent.

AI can take millions of units and sort them into specific numbers. AI tools can be tailored to create a blueprint of success for you and your retail clients.

You don't have to be a data scientist or computer whiz to use these tools. Keep reading to find out how Hivery Curate tools can help improve retail strategy, line reviews, and the assortment validation process for retailers.

Using AI To Guide A Product Line Review (PLR)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology can compile all available data from similar retailers across the globe. Using algorithms, AI can gather, sort, and specify things retailers need to know.

AI uses this info to provide advice about retail strategy. It can tell stores what kinds of products they need to order and how much. This is all done in a transparent way where retailers can see and change parts of each algorithm in which it considers category goals, merchandising constraints and assortment rules in its thinking.

The result? Retailers can order the right amount of the right items from the right categories. It eliminates excess inventory and wasted space. The entire process takes minutes, not months.

AI technology can also offer recommendations about which categories and items are likely to grow. Based on retailer location and size, AI can be used to recommend pricing structures. This data is also used to provide advice about which items and categories to place in which location, and how much.

Using this AI fast-track approach also removes human bias. This gives a distinct advantage to anyone giving line reviews to retailers. You'll be able to present specific trends, quantities, and categories without inserting personal viewpoints or opinions.

Here are three things AI can help with specifically:

AI Can Help With Category Strategy Design

Category management is a crucial step for any successful retailer. Retailers need to know what to order, how much of it, and how they're going to display or store it. They also need to know current market trends to guide specific categories.

Traditional category strategy processes can take several months. With ever-changing trends and supply chain issues, retailers need suppliers to:

• Provide strategic guidance/leadership 
• Give timely Shopper Insights 
• Be available and responsive 

And all this while being objective to grow the category.

This is where AI can help. You can design assortment strategies, let AI simulate the impact of that strategy and determine which is best to present to your retailer.  

Just look at this video:

2. AI Can Help With Quantify Strategy

AI like HIVERY Curate isn't a just category assortment or planogram generation tool, it’s a simulator.  It can simulate strategies and quantify the economic performance of that strategy and compare it to other assortment strategies that you are considering to show your retailer.

Suppliers can also input different category goals and ask the model to “constraint” the goals to set merchandising and assortment rules for specific SKUs or specific retailers. 

This means the results you see are specific to each strategy situation. Suppliers can use specific qualifiers to provide store-level info and quantify them into sales and volume terms.  Furthermore, it can offer retailers the ability to see how and when those rules and constraints impacted sales and volume terms. You can complete transparency. This is a powerful consideration when you are in a product line review. 

Through AI, suppliers are able to give their retailers a winning strategy based on accurate and specific recommendations. 

3. AI Can Help With Providing Rapid Answers From Retailer changes

Once suppliers and retailers have their AI model, they can easily view and change it. If a retailer has drastic changes in one area or category, AI can make those changes quickly. What would take humans months to accomplish, AI can do in minutes.

If a retail client wants to predict post-pandemic online sales, you can change behavior in HIVERY Curate. You can create multiple simulations using several variables or constraints you like. You and the retailer can quantify any category strategic plans.

AI has the ability to inform retail strategy by simulating various situations where retailers may question or object. Suppliers have an edge over their competitors by preparing for open dialogue with their retailers that is rapid, transparent and data-driven.

Using AI, suppliers can show their retailers the impact points of distribution (POD)  or days of supply (DOS) with any SKU or brand. This makes product review, joint business planning or validation process more efficient and effective with AI.  ​​

Summary

AI, and HIVERY Curate, are fundamentally changing the way consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies and retailers collaborate with regard to assortment and space decisions.   

With HIVERY Curate, it’s like you have data scientists at your in a category line review. Today with your retailer you can explore and discover new assortment category revenue in ways not possible with human approaches.

Humans can't possibly recreate the collection, categorization, and personalization of AI. This means retailers no longer have to wait months to complete their category management plans.

Want to know more about how to optimize your retail strategy without hiring a data scientist? If you're tired of months-long processes slowing you down, ask how you can speed them up using HIVERY Curate. 

Contact me today and let us help you prepare for your next product line review (PLR).