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Luxury: Retail Distribution and Inventory Allocation with Anaplan

Supported by Beyond Plans, a leading international luxury house redesigned its distribution and replenishment processes with Anaplan to move from a reactive distribution model to a demand-driven supply chain. Results: a 66% reduction in calculation times for allocation proposals, consolidated visibility over global inventory, and an enhanced ability to adjust allocations in line with demand.

Project challenges

A leading international luxury house, the company operates a global network of boutiques and warehouses. With the acceleration of collections and the multiplication of distribution channels, supply chain trade-offs had become increasingly complex: balancing inventory across regions, managing market priorities, and addressing seasonality constraints.

The teams were relying on an internal application that had become difficult to evolve. Several operational limitations were directly hindering performance:

  • largely manual processes;
  • processing times incompatible with the required frequency of recalculation;
  • fragmented visibility over global inventory;
  • trade-offs managed outside the system;
  • limited flexibility in managing allocations and reallocations in response to demand fluctuations.

The project covered a particularly broad scope:

  • more than 200 boutiques and over 10 warehouses;
  • Men’s and Women’s collections;
  • more than 35,000 SKU-size combinations;
  • more than 100 users across central and local teams.

The solution implemented with Beyond Plans

To support this transformation, Beyond Plans deployed its expertise to build, with Anaplan, an integrated and scalable supply chain platform designed to sustainably support the company’s distribution and allocation challenges.

Beyond Plans contributed to:

  • the functional design of the processes;
  • the architecture of the Anaplan models;
  • the modeling of distribution rules;
  • data integration;
  • optimizer integration;
  • agile project management.

The project was structured into several sprints and two successive go-live phases to secure the progressive adoption of the new processes.

An architecture designed for performance

The platform was structured around several specialized Anaplan models and a centralized Data Hub, in order to isolate heavy processing and preserve the performance of the interfaces used by business teams.

Intensive calculations and optimizers were isolated in dedicated models, separate from user interfaces, allowing business teams to continue working while heavy processing was being executed.

The functional scope notably covers:

  • assortment management;
  • Average Daily Sales (ADS) calculations;
  • Target Stock Level (TSL) calculations;
  • allocations and reallocations;
  • pre-orders;
  • regional replenishment.

The platform now enables recalculations several times per week, allowing allocations to be adjusted more quickly according to changes in demand.

A major data integration workstream

The integration architecture designed by Beyond Plans is capable of synchronizing more than 50 flows between the different Anaplan models and operational systems, with a clear objective: to guarantee reliable and actionable inventory data at high frequency.

This architecture is based on:

  • CloudWorks for inter-model synchronizations;
  • Anaplan Connect for optimizers;
  • an integration middleware for exchanges with operational systems.

It enables frequent synchronization of inventory data and a smooth flow of information between planning and distribution.

Optimizer at the heart of supply chain trade-offs

The project relies on Anaplan Optimizer to automatically generate allocation and replenishment proposals.

The optimization rules notably take into account:

  • boutique requirements;
  • available inventory levels;
  • logistics constraints;
  • market priorities;
  • shipping capacities.

Previously performed manually, these trade-offs are now automated, while remaining controllable by business teams through configurable parameters.

Results

66% reduction in calculation times

The time required to generate shipping and allocation proposals has been reduced by 66%. Teams can now recalculate allocations several times per week and respond more quickly to changes in demand.

Automation of supply chain operations

Requirements calculation, allocation proposals, data synchronization, and transmission of flows to operational systems: a large share of manual processing has been automated. Teams now spend more time on analysis and business trade-offs.

Improved inventory management

The platform enables more granular management of inventory levels through more frequent recalculations, better consideration of product lifecycles, and an enhanced ability to quickly reallocate inventory between regions and boutiques. The company is seeing a reduction in stockout and overstock situations.

Strengthened collaboration between central and local teams

Merchandising and supply chain teams now work in a shared environment. The removal of Excel coordination files and validations outside the platform has streamlined exchanges between central and local entities and reduced the risk of errors.

This project illustrates the full importance of an approach combining supply chain business expertise, mastery of Anaplan architecture, and strong collaboration with operational teams.