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4R Systems Helps Retailers with State-of-the-Art Allocation
and
Assortment Planning
4R's Right Buy and Right Test Products are Enhanced by Additional Capability
NEW YORK, NY - January 13, 2003 - NRF 2003 - 4R Systems, Inc., a leading provider of analytical software that enables retailers and manufacturers of short lifecycle products to accurately match supply with demand, today announced that it is introducing assortment and allocation planning as an integrated feature in its Right Test and Right Buy products at the National Retail Federation Conference 2003, being held in New York City.
Right Buy, 4R's provisioning tool can now be used to allocate the precise quantity of merchandise that should be placed in each store, with category-specific historical selling patterns and advanced analytics. 4R's proprietary approach optimizes gross margin by calculating the risk of over and under buying and recommending the optimal order quantity.
4R's Right Test product applies analytics in order to group stores that have similar selling patterns. The new assortment capability takes advantage of a flexible data-filtering tool and a sophisticated clustering algorithm to group stores and to establish assortment groups.
"We are pleased to introduce these key capabilities that will allow our clients, many of whom make 'once and done' purchases, to do so more efficiently," said Jeff Singer, 4R Systems' CEO. "The assortment and allocation planning functions enable the optimization of product inventory to reduce the goods that eventually are subject to markdowns."
A 4R customer and leading supplier of fashion bedding and accessories has done several side-by-side comparisons of Right Buy's recommendations with those obtained using traditional methods of the product allocation process. In each case Right Buy did a better job of balancing the risk of closeouts and stockouts, recommending the optimal quantity of stock needed for each store.
"These new features will support retailers as well as wholesalers, since an initial buy is critical for both," said Dave Leonard, CTO at 4R Systems. "The emphasis is placed on making sure wholesalers and retailers both have the right product mixes and quantities available for consumers. Our technology improves inventory at the store level by looking at large data sets to understand selling patterns and complementing it with demographics and regional assortments to enhance and improve the method of analysis for our merchants."
4R's enhanced features for Right Buy and Right Test are available immediately.
About 4R Systems
4R Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of analytical software that allows retailers and manufacturers to increase the profitability of short lifecycle products by accurately matching supply with demand. 4R's products leverage transactional and point-of-sale (POS) data and turn it into critical decision-making information for forecasting and supply planning. The company was founded by supply chain experts Marshall Fisher of The Wharton School and Ananth Raman of Harvard Business School, whose groundbreaking research on product lifecycles with over 30 world-class retailers pioneered the retail analytics sector.
4R is based in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and has offices in Boston, Massachusetts and Milan, Italy. Notable clients include Ahold, American Pacific, Kenneth Cole Productions, Linens 'n Things, Nokia and Stride Rite. For more information, please visit www.4rsystems.com or call 1-866-4RSYSTEMS.
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