If you’re looking to elevate your inventory management with more precise and agile demand planning, PlanningPro by AGR is the tool you need. Built as an advanced module on top of Inventory IQ, PlanningPro offers powerful features for sales forecasting, promotional planning, and connecting item histories—all designed to help you manage your inventory with greater precision and control.
Advanced sales planning for better decision making
PlanningPro gives you access to sales planning that helps you make smarter decisions based on more than just historical data. You can plan sales at different levels—by item, vendor, or location—so you have a clear view of what’s been selling and what’s projected to sell in the future. This platform is perfect for supporting your S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) processes, allowing you to fine-tune forecasts at both high and detailed levels.
What makes PlanningPro stand out is that you’re not limited to relying solely on system-generated forecasts. If you know your business is going to experience a demand change that historical data won’t capture—such as a store expansion or a promotional campaign—you can override the statistical forecast and adjust the sales plan based on your knowledge. The system integrates these changes with your order proposals, ensuring that your demand planning is fully aligned with what’s happening in your business.
Connect items for smoother transitions
When you introduce new items into your inventory, transitioning from old to new can often cause disruptions in your forecasting and ordering. With PlanningPro’s connected items feature, you can link the sales history of an outgoing item to a new one. This ensures that the new item gets a forecast based on the old one’s data, helping you avoid overstocking or under-ordering during the transition period.
The system also connects stock levels, so you won’t reorder the replacement item until the older product’s stock reaches a predefined threshold. This feature is particularly useful if you’re launching updated versions of existing products or phasing out older stock.
High-level and granular control over sales planning
With PlanningPro, you have both high-level and granular control over your inventory. You can adjust the forecast for an entire store or an individual item group. For example, if you expect a 30% increase in sales of accessories in a specific store, you can apply that percentage change, and PlanningPro will proportionally adjust the forecast for every SKU in that category.
You can also manage promotional planning directly in the system. If you’ve negotiated a deal with a supplier for specific items, you can create a plan to push those items at the right time. PlanningPro integrates this with your sales plan, ensuring that your inventory levels match the forecasted demand during promotions.
Forecasting at the customer level
One of PlanningPro’s most unique features is the ability to break down sales forecasts at the customer level. You can view detailed sales data for individual customers and even exclude specific customers from your sales history to refine your forecast. This is particularly useful if you’ve lost a major client or if a customer’s buying behavior has changed. For example, if a customer like a hospital no longer buys from you after losing a contract, you can remove that customer’s historical sales from future forecasts to prevent over-ordering.
Forecast profiles for new and seasonal items
Launching new items can be tricky when you don’t have historical data to rely on for forecasting. PlanningPro addresses this with forecast profiles. You can create profiles for new items based on expected sales patterns—whether it’s a summer profile for seasonal items or a general forecast for new product categories. The system uses these profiles to generate initial forecasts, adjusting them as real sales data comes in.
This is especially powerful for seasonal items, which may have distinct sales peaks and valleys. You can set up forecast profiles that reflect seasonal demand, ensuring that your stock levels align with the actual sales cycle of these products.
Weekly forecasts for greater agility
For businesses that need to stay responsive to fast-changing demand, PlanningPro offers weekly forecasting. Unlike traditional monthly forecasts, which divide the year into 12 periods, weekly forecasting splits it into 52 buckets. This approach is ideal for retail environments where demand shifts frequently, allowing you to adjust stock levels more quickly and accurately. Each week, the system incorporates the most recent sales data, making it easier to respond to short-term changes in demand.
Advanced forecasting settings
PlanningPro also includes advanced forecasting settings that give you more control over how stockouts and other disruptions affect your inventory. For example, you can configure the system to assume that sales are lost during a stockout, meaning no additional orders will be placed for what wasn’t sold. Alternatively, you can set the system to account for missed sales, which tells PlanningPro to increase future orders to make up for stockouts.
The system also features automatic stockout bridging, which enriches your forecast by estimating what you would have sold if stock had been available. This ensures that your forecasts remain accurate, even if stock disruptions occur.
Precision planning for optimal inventory management
PlanningPro by AGR is your key to taking full control of your inventory and demand planning. Whether you need to connect item histories, plan for promotions, or manage customer-specific forecasts, PlanningPro offers the tools you need to stay agile and responsive to market changes. The advanced forecasting capabilities—such as weekly forecasts, forecast profiles for new items, and stockout bridging—ensure that your inventory levels always match real-world demand.
With PlanningPro, you’re not just reacting to demand—you’re anticipating it. Take the next step to book a demo and learn how PlanningPro can help your business run smoother, more efficiently, and with fewer stockouts and overstock situations.
