Hibbett gets a connected view of inventory planning with Oracle Cloud
The fashion retailer runs inventory planning faster and more effectively with Oracle Retail Assortment Planning and Merchandise Financial Planning.
“Oracle provides a great assortment planning tool. It gives us the opportunity to slice and dice data in ways we couldn’t do through Excel. We’ve also cut our assortment planning process from weeks of preparation down to one or two days.”
Business challenges
Hibbett needed to move away from using Excel to a single, robust solution for retail inventory forecasting and planning to make better use of its customer data. Hibbett wanted to get its data out of spreadsheets and into a system that would support its assortment strategy, which includes providing compelling assortments by store type and getting the right products in front of customers.
Why Hibbett chose Oracle
The company decided that Oracle Retail Assortment Planning was the best tool for the job. Hibbett also chose Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning as a single solution to deliver a systematic method of targeting, forecasting, and planning for cross-functional use.
Hibbett upgraded its highly customized on-premises Oracle Retail Xstore Point of Service (POS) to the out-of-the-box, mobile-enabled Xstore and Oracle Retail Store Inventory Operations Cloud Service, as well as cloud versions of Oracle Retail Customer Engagement and Order Fulfillment. These solutions aim to meet associates on the sales floor with accurate details about products across channels, so they can serve customers from any physical location and online, improving the overall customer experience.
Results
Oracle Retail helped Hibbett optimize its product mix by tracking sell-through rates, gross margins, inventory turnover, and returns; determining customer needs and demand; while also providing the right assortments. Hibbett tapped Oracle Retail Assortment Planning and Oracle Retail Merchandise Financial Planning for a connected view of inventory planning to buyers, planners, and executives while ensuring a compelling assortment is available for customers.
Hibbett reduced monthly planning reporting time from hours to minutes by moving away from Excel. Buyers, planners, and assortment planners all work in one tool, which manages the merchandise financial planning process.
And with the upgraded mobile Oracle Retail Xstore POS systems, Hibbett expects to bolster customer loyalty, resulting in higher-value customers shopping more often and buying more. All of this should happen as natively integrated merchandising systems deliver the right product to the right store at the right time and right price.
Partners
With guidance from Oracle partner RetSci, Hibbett selected Oracle Retail Assortment Planning and implemented it in seven months, followed by Merchandise Financial Planning in four months.
About the customer
Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, Hibbett is a leading athletic-inspired fashion retailer with 1,158 Hibbett, City Gear, and Sports Additions specialty stores in 36 states. Hibbett has served customers for more than 75 years with convenient locations, superior personalized customer service, and access to coveted footwear, apparel, and accessories from top brands like Nike, Jordan, and adidas.