Consumer packaged goods maker GoodTimes Entertainment (GTE) has selected Evant’s Demand Planning and Replenishment (DPR) solution to be the key system for distributing and managing inventory with their largest retail partner, Wal-Mart.
In an effort to maintain its 98% service levels at Wal-Mart and other retail customers, GTE is undergoing an upgrade of its demand planning and replenishment systems. The cornerstone of this initiative is the deployment of Evant DPR, a next-generation replenishment solution. Evant DPR will automate forecasting and enable GTE to predict demand and generate orders as needed.
GTE distributes its products directly to the consumer through direct response transactional television programming (e.g., infomercials and home shopping channels), telemarketing, catalog merchants, direct mail, and the Internet, and through traditional retail channels. GTE is also an independent supplier of home video titles to mass retailers, and maintains an extensive retail distribution network that reaches more than 40,000 retail outlets in the U.S., as well as a global network of strategic partners and licenses.
“Our ability to get daily visibility to service levels and inventory needs at each store/SKU location, as well as at our distribution center, is critical to meeting the high service level requirements of Wal-Mart,” says Dan Coyle, vice president of retail operations for GTE. “The Evant solution will provide us with this visibility, and enable us to account for seasonal demand patterns by having product arrive prior to peak periods. We will also be able to separately track promotional demand to get a better understanding of the impact on inventory levels, while prohibiting this demand from impacting regular turn inventory levels.”
Evant Demand Planning and Replenishment is an integrated forecasting, replenishment and allocations solution. At the heart of the solution is a statistical forecasting engine that combines forecasting techniques with demand cleansing, day-of-the-week and seasonal profiling tools. The system enables retailers to forecast demand more accurately and minimize their inventory investment by automatically adapting to changing demand patterns. Retailers gain improved forecast accuracy for all types of demand, including seasonal goods, new items, promotions and slow-movers.
