Insight-Driven Retailing Blog

Oracle's recent acquisition of AVT, a UK-based provider of 3-D visual macro space planning solutions, adds end-to-end space management to Oracle's existing footprint. But what does that really mean for retailers?

Once a retailer decides what to buy from vendors and how much of it to allocate to specific stores, someone needs to decide where in the stores the products will sit. This is a very important step in retail since store layouts are crucial to the shopping experience. Products need to be easy to locate, near related products, and have the correct facings. Should this product be on the endcap? Should it be at eye level? Should it have 8 facings or 10? Space management is about maximizing every inch of the selling floor.

Traditionally, headquarters creates a limited number of planograms (PoG) that define where products go for a particular store format. Unfortunately, not all stores are the same. Not only do their formats vary, but there's usually a degree of localization that makes them even more unique. So often the corporate PoG is treated as advice only and compliance is low. The answer is more collaboration between headquarters and the store. An increase of 10% in compliance can decrease stock-outs by 1%, and that leads to higher sales.

AVT's software enables leading retail companies such as Tesco, SuperValu, The Container Store and The Carphone Warehouse to plan and execute their retail floor space, including collaboration between HQ, stores, and vendors as well as compliance checking.

Want to know more? For ORUG members, there's a "Shop Talk" session scheduled for January 8th on this very topic. For those that plan to attend NRF, information about AVT will be available in the Oracle booth. And for existing AVT customers, there will be a welcome breakfast at NRF Monday morning.