Helzberg Diamonds adds clarity with AI in retail and optimization

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend. For more than 100 years, the mission of Helzberg Diamonds has been to make people feel loved. With this goal as its driving force, the company created a legacy built on trust, knowledge, and high-quality jewelry at an incredible price. With over 150 stores and 2,000 associates across the United States, the company is passionate about delivering the right assortment, both in person and online. Fueling that mission today is a thoughtful approach to technology adoption to meet changing customer better needs both now and in the future.

Helzberg realized that it needed to replace its merchandise planning system because it was both antiquated and nearing the end of life. “We took a holistic view of our current planning system and realized we had the opportunity to replace other systems as well. We wanted to take advantage of the scientific advances available to us,” says Nathan Gray, vice president of merchandising, planning and allocation.

Helzberg embarked on a search for a new solution focusing on the tenets of scalability, efficiency, reliability, and accuracy. Critically, it also had to have assortment capabilities that could support Helzberg’s end-to-end processes, including open-to-buy. Ultimately, the company decided on Oracle Retail solutions, specifically Oracle Merchandise Financial Planning, Retail Demand Forecasting, Replenishment Management, Assortment Planning, and the Retail Science Platform. Helzberg proceeded to deploy these solutions alongside its existing Oracle systems, including Oracle Xstore Point-of-Service and Oracle Retail Customer Engagement.

“Oracle won for many reasons, including its overall functionality, great user interface, and exception management,” says Gray. “But what set Oracle apart was the artificial intelligence built in to the solutions. We strive to be a data-driven company, and the Retail Science Platform supports us in truly achieving this.”

Offering advanced AI for retail at scale, the Oracle platform provided a host of next-generation features for retailers, of which the team at Helzberg found of particular interest: demand transference. “Having worked in retail for 30 years, I know that the last thing we wanted was a duplication of assortment,” says Gray. “It simply takes up time and resources. The more we looked into Oracle’s capabilities around demand transference, the more excited we became.”

Oracle Retail Consulting worked with Helzberg to deliver a rapid implementation of Oracle Retail Merchandising Financial Planning and the Demand Forecasting project. Helzberg used the AI for retail platform to discover which product attributes drove consumer purchases, so the jeweler could better understand unique, substitute, and incremental demand for its products. These new capabilities helped guide the Helzberg team in maximizing SKUs with higher unique demand while reducing those with greater transferable demand, thus creating a more compelling product assortment.

After deploying the majority of its chosen Oracle Retail solutions, the Helzberg team implemented assortment planning and realized an immediate goal of impacting fall and holiday assortments. The culmination of the deployment, this last step brought together the information and insight provided by Oracle Retail solutions to help Helzberg deliver a compelling retail assortment through optimized retail planning. In today’s increasingly complex and competitive retail industry, this gave the company a key strategic advantage and positioned it for continued success.

Rose Spicer is senior global director for Oracle Retail.

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