Island Pacific SmartPlanning vs Retail Directions Merchandise Planning

Island Pacific SmartPlanning is an integrated merchandise-planning system for global multichannel retailers. Its modules cover pre-season and in-season planning, assortment development, forecasting, allocation, size profiling and replenishment. Core Planning supports business-specific workflows or preconfigured FastPlan plans, including key-item forecasting. Assortment Planner handles cross-planning, store planning, grading and option planning, while Assortment Builder lets teams develop ranges with product information, attributes and visuals. Forecast Manager provides data-mining and machine-learning forecasting tools. Allocation Manager supports cross-channel allocation with multiple algorithms, and Size Profiler manages size mixes across products and channels. Replenishment Manager calculates stock needs from past trends and projected sales. Island Pacific says SmartPlanning uses one data source across channels and integrates with its modules and existing ERP systems. Controls include top-down and bottom-up planning, plan locking and customizable views. Pricing is on request.

Retail Directions Merchandise Planning is a web-based merchandise management solution for planning, buying, and managing retail ranges with live sales, gross margin, and inventory data. Retailers can budget sales and profit by time, location, and item, and plan finances by category. Purchasing covers orders for direct delivery, cross-dock, and break-bulk, plus purchase and on-demand allocations. Store replenishment algorithms and stock redistribution support balancing or consolidating inventory across stores. Markdown and promotion planning are included. SalesCube provides margin and sell-through analysis across three dimensions. Retail Directions describes one integrated database shared by its retail solutions and lists partner integrations with Adyen, Afterpay, humm, Laybuy, Slyp, and Zip. The web product is paid, with pricing on request. The company says retailers in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom use its platform.