Product Planning

I have done some really fun projects introducing small & growing businesses to the world of planning. In a nutshell, planning takes historical and future information and analyzes it to make informed decisions today to reach tomorrow's goal. 

I begin with pricing and gross margin analyses so we both deeply understand the economics of your pricing/costing and how it fits into your overall budget and strategic plan. We then analyze and together determine if it needs any tweaking.

Production planning is an approach to determine questions such as how much product to manufacture at what cost, how many units to produce at a time, at which factory, and when. It involves creating a calendar to meet milestones given varying lead times in the supply chain, and connects marketing, sales, and production's efforts. It can also extend to raw material planning if you're making your own product or feeding a factory the raw materials.

Merchandise planning is an approach to maximizing profitability by optimally designing a number of products that maximize sales, minimize inventory, and increase gross margins and profit. I can build Excel-based tools for you, and teach you these concepts. They are critical to running a fine-tuned operation.

Retail planning is an approach to optimally purchasing the right amount of product for a retail store, using historic sales information and future sales projections. I can train you to use my Excel-based tools, and develop procedures for your team to regularly export data from your system and perform these analyses.

I have a deep background in introducing planning processes to growing companies. Planning is the area where you can gain competitive advantage over your competition. Once I build the Excel-based tools for you, you'll want to play around in them non-stop.