A Q&A with Columbus Consulting Partners: Elizabeth Elliott and Brian Greene

The retail industry is in a new chapter of its evolution. From stores to catalogs to digital and social commerce, the complexity of managing the business has gone from single channel to multi-channel to omni-channel and from single supply chains to diverse sourcing strategies. At each stage, retailers addressed their planning processes to add on to and not necessarily build end-to-end.

As retailers now face the challenge of integrating disparate technologies across various stages of their supply chain, the need for a cohesive, data-driven approach has become essential. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), retailers are finding innovative ways to streamline operations, optimize inventory, and predict customer demand more accurately. By harnessing the power of AI, businesses are not only improving operational efficiency but also gaining the agility needed to stay competitive in a fast-paced market. The timeliness of implementing these systems is key, as the success of retailers increasingly depends on their ability to make accurate and timely decisions across the entire value chain, from product planning to customer delivery.

This new chapter of retail planning is fraught with choices, challenges and confusion around data integration, systems selection, and even change management. Among its other specializations, Columbus Consulting has worked in the planning space for over two decades and has seen not only the evolution of the industry but the sophistication of technologies to address end-to-end planning. 

Here are 5 questions posed to two of our leading planning experts regarding the current state of retail planning and where and how the industry is moving forward.


ONE

What main challenges/opportunities have you heard from retailers at NRF about their planning systems/processes? Specifically, what were they looking to solve for or enhance?

Brian Greene:

Retailers face a broad range of challenges, often tied to outdated systems that need replacing or a lack of integration among existing systems, leading to manual, time-consuming processes for transferring data between platforms. The most common situation I see is that they have a set of systems to support part of their End-to-End process but are still leveraging Excel to fill the gaps. Often those gaps are the most consequential.  Related to this issue is the effect of functional silos on how software solutions are selected and a lack of considering how they could be leveraged by sharing data and aligning on a common set of metrics.  What’s missing in this situation is an enterprise-wide vision of how the process should work across the organization and the capabilities needed to support that process.  If that were in place, decisions on what systems and capabilities are needed would be much clearer and would achieve better results.

Another common challenge is caused by “homegrown” processes that are mis-aligned to industry best practices.  Most software vendors design their solutions to support workflows and that are the most efficient and generally aligned with industry standards.  Often, the retailer will establish a team of SMEs to participate in the selection process and the subsequent implementation.  Without considering the need to assess their own processes and make targeted changes, they often end up with a solution that the users are frustrated with, may not fully take advantage of the functionality, or may leave gaps in their process that require suboptimal solutions.

TWO

What are you seeing/hearing about the application of AI in delivering better end-to-end planning?  

Elizabeth Elliott:

Newness in AI this year centered on ‘Generative AI Agents’.  From Agentforce:  “AI Agents rely on machine learning and natural language processing (NLP)  to handle a wide range of tasks. These intelligent agents can include anything from answering simple questions to resolving complex issues — even multi-tasking. Most importantly, AI agents can continuously improve their own performance through self-learning. This is distinct from traditional AI, which requires human input for specific tasks.” 

When this technology is applied to what we traditionally call ‘exception management’ in planning, a planning organization will become much more productive in driving the business due to the heavy lifting performed by AI Agents.  For example, the ability to  ask a system what drove (or didn’t drive) business last week, will allow for accurate decision making closer to real time.  

THREE

How important is planning to retailers in 2025, is it a priority, are they investing in this area of the business; if so, where?

 BG:

Planning will always be important and should be a priority.  Though I’ve seen more investment in the last few years, Excel tools are still way too prevalent.  As software capabilities have become much more sophisticated, there’s a significant opportunity for retailers to create a more customized experience for their customer by localizing the assortment, or using AI to tailor their ecommerce experience, for example.  For most retailers, planning today still focuses too much on enterprise level category plans, missing the opportunity to align with a customer that demands a more customized experience.

FOUR

What are some of the most important developments happening in end-to-end planning other than AI?

BG:

Software vendors are now more than ever, expanding their solution offering to cover more of the End-to-End process and combining capabilities to function seamlessly.  An example is what used to be separate systems for Allocation, Demand Forecasting and DC/Store Replenishment, and Size/Pack Optimization, are now showing up as one integrated solution.  Other solutions are connected in real time, eliminating the need to wait for overnight processing.

FIVE

Please share any metrics or results you have seen from clients when they embrace end-to-end planning and are getting “it right” in their organizations. (such as reductions in markdowns, higher profits, better risk avoidance, etc).

EE

Getting it right has always centered on increasing full price sales, reducing markdowns, and planning and managing inventory accurately.  However, to fully embrace end-to-end planning, data outside of traditional planning needs to be incorporated into the process and correlation analysis.  For example, social selling, e-commerce metrics, and the customer journey all need to be part of the data sets utilized in planning.

BG

Most often I’ve seen Sales, Margin, and Inventory Carrying cost savings as a result of improvements in forecast accuracy, buying decisions, and optimized inventory levels.  In addition, a once manually derived, time-based demand forecast, has been automated with much more sophistication, resulting in less time and people needed, saving operating expense or allowing an investment of time to other opportunities that their teams were not able to get to.  Leveraging optimization capabilities and sharing data across functional areas has created efficiencies in operating expense and reduced errors caused by manual handoffs that result in a variety of issues.

Regardless where a retailer is in their planning stages and overall digital transformation, the expectations are high in order to stay competitive in the new consumer-driven, high response, fast-speed marketplace. As such, retailers are looking for more accurate planning with less touch points, broader integration (i.e., line planning, supply chain, etc.) and AI identifying risks and opportunities. Auditing the business state, building a roadmap and assessing and prioritizing needs will help focus the industry on solutions that deliver value and that are scalable long-term.   

ABOUT ELIZABETH ELLIOTT

Elizabeth Elliott is the Board Chair & Managing Partner at Columbus Consulting and an accomplished retail executive with a proven track record of successfully leading and implementing large complex initiatives, while diving in deep and driving business process, change management, and ensuring people, process, culture and technology are aligned to deliver sustained results. 

ABOUT BRIAN GREENE

Brian Greene is a Partner with Columbus Consulting. He has held executive-level roles throughout his 25+ year career in retail and e-commerce, specializing in Merchandising and Planning, Allocation, and Assortment Planning. Brian has experience with multiple retailers in leading and advising on the system design and implementation, end-to-end process optimization, and organization design.  He has depth of knowledge of the department and specialty store segments, private and national brand business models, and apparel and home product categories.

ABOUT COLUMBUS CONSULTING

Columbus Consulting delivers solutions that drive true value and have been transforming the retail, grocery and CPG industries for over two decades. We are a retail consulting company of industry experts. Our approach is simple, if you do it, we do it. We are more than consultants; we are experienced practitioners who actually sat in our clients’ seats. We understand the challenges, know what questions to ask and deliver the right solutions. Columbus offers a unique, consumer-centric approach with an end-to-end perspective that bridges functional & organization silos from strategy to execution. Our specialties include: unified commerce, merchandising & category management, planning & inventory management, sourcing & supply chain, data & analytics, accounting, finance & operations, people & organization and information technology. Let us know how we can help you. To learn more, visit COLUMBUSCONSULTING.COM.

Connect with one of our experts