Manhattan Associates Breathes New Life Into Apparel and Footwear Inventory Allocation With Industry’s First Omnichannel-Centric Solution

Manhattan Associates Inc. (NASDAQ: MANH), a leader in supply chain and omnichannel commerce, today introduced Manhattan Active® Allocation, the first allocation solution specifically engineered for today’s omnichannel marketplace, with a fresh approach to managing short lifecycle inventory. A leader in inventory optimization, Manhattan is the first to apply this expertise to softlines retail, with a new solution that also improves allocator agility and responsiveness.

Traditional allocation solutions lack the ability to sense and respond to today’s complex retail environment and evolving shopping habits. Manhattan Active Allocation offers a more nimble and modern approach to inventory allocation of short-lifecycle products for apparel, footwear and other fast-fashion retailers. It offers allocators a better understanding of real demand by giving them direct insight into today’s omni-fulfillment strategies, like BOPIS and curbside pickup. The solution also has the unique ability to shape allocation decisions based on the distinct types of fulfillment experiences offered for each product at both the store and distribution center (DC) level.

“Manhattan has reimagined the entire allocation process with the notion that today’s retailers must better align inventory deployment decisions with how the brand intends to engage its customers,” said Scott Fenwick, senior director of product strategy, Manhattan Associates. “For the first time, allocators will have the ability to make allocation decisions pre-season, before inventory hits the stores, and in real time during the selling season, leveraging granular omni-fulfillment insights. This will give them the ability to align their short-lifecycle inventory plans with their omnichannel fulfillment strategies, resulting in fewer fulfillment redirects and end-of-season markdowns.”

Built on industry-leading Manhattan Active application architecture, Manhattan Active Allocation is always current, continuously adapting and automatically scaling and flexing to accommodate changing needs as a business grows. The microservices-based, cloud native solution never needs to be upgraded, yet is still fully extensible.

The new solution delivers real-time performance monitoring and updates to inventory and sales, network wide. Inventory performance is automatically captured by channel and fulfillment type, and configurable allocations help users define, preserve, learn and reuse high-performing fulfillment strategies year over year.

Manhattan Active Allocation’s embedded analytics and data visualizations give retailers the agility to instantly respond to changing business conditions and dynamically evolve their allocation strategies to maximize sales and margins. The solution gives allocators the agility to create adaptable allocation plans, which result in less stranded inventory and less financial risk for the business.