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General
Q: After Signing up on IRISMS Pro, is it safe to start uploading data as inputs right away? Is there any NDA (Non-disclosure agreement) or EULA or any other agreement which ensures that my data is secure and will not be accessible to any third party?
A: During the sign-up process, before you submit your details, you get to see terms and conditions on the page which includes a EULA (end-user license agreement). This agreement has all clauses necessary to ensure that your data is secure and you can start your uploads on IRIS MS Pro without any hesitation. You can refer to the agreement on the following link – EULA.
Q: How will projects be created, at the company level or for different sales channels?
A: The concept of projects has been created to provide flexibility to the organization using IRISMS Pro. Projects can be created for different brands, different channels, regions, a combination of these or any other way based on how the roles and responsibilities of the users are in the organization. The only caveat here is that by creating a lot of projects, an organization may lose the advantage of analyzing data at a central/macro level.
Q: Are primary sales good enough for the tool or is it important to upload the secondary sales?
What if we do not have secondary sales for some of our channels?
A: It is very important to have secondary sales as an input in IRIS MS Pro as that gives the actual performance and is the correct input to use for predicting demand mix. Primary sales can be misleading and do not take into consideration the secondary sales that could not happen (dead stock, returns, etc.) which directly impacts the accuracy of IRIS MS Pro outputs.
Q: Do you incorporate customer returns? Is there a size that is being returned a lot? We might
reduce producing it
A: In offline, the customer physically tried, tested a product before buying. The no. of returns are relatively low. Hence the sales data is far more meaningful for analysis as opposed to returns data. In online, the customer can return the product or multiple reasons –
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Q: We do not have uniform SKU codes, there are multiple SKUs of the same product. Can IRIS MS Pro handle this? Is there an SKU mapping feature?
A: There is no SKU mapping feature in IRIS MS Pro (It’s there in IRIS MS Pro enterprise), so it has to be made sure that each product’s SKU code is unique. Else the user needs to manually map the SKUs to a single SKU offline before upload the inputs.
Q: How is IRIS MS Pro better than Microsoft Excel?
A: IRIS MS Pro works on a set of patent-pending algorithms in the backend which have been made after years of research on the planning and distribution done by merchandisers. This was achieved by working directly with multiple brands’ merchandising team on IRIS MS Pro enterprise and identifying key areas of improving the accuracy of outputs and automation. IRIS MS Pro incorporates all those learning and has been made with the vision of making life as simple for merchandisers as possible with high accuracy and speed. Not to mention, all calculations done in IRIS MS Pro are at a very granular level – store + product attribute group, which becomes a challenge when done manually in Excel or a similar tool, esp. when the number of stores or product attribute groups are high.
Q: Can you integrate to the partners via API or FTP for data to automatically flow in without the need to upload?
A: No, as of now IRIS MS Pro does not support system integrations and inputs must be uploaded directly on the tool before usage.
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Q: In which format should the dates be uploaded in sales data?
A: IRIS MS Pro accepts dates uploaded in “yyyy-mm-dd”. In most cases, the format is set to “dd-mm-yyyy” and might come the same way on downloading the templates/demo data before upload. So it is recommended to change these dates to the correct upload format of “yyyy-mm-dd”. This can be done easily by using TEXT(“date”,”yyyy-mm-dd”) Excel formula.
Q: Do you consider inventory? How do you correct for availability/exposure?
A: No, IRIS MS Pro does not take daily historical inventory as an input. Availability/exposure is corrected in the algorithm via a statistical technique. However, store and warehouse inventory snapshots are taken as input before running distribution.
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Q: What is the logic behind data extrapolation?
A: IRIS MS Pro-M does not consider inventory data. Since we are not considering every day sales data in planning module we do a smoothening/ calculation on moving averages to correct for stock outs and remove silos in data set for stock correction.
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A: No and order of attributes can be defined as per user requirement.
Q: How does IRIS MS Pro process (clean) the raw data to predict true (correct) demand from raw sales? How are liquidations (discounted sales) and unavailability (of inventory) accounted for while predicting demand?
A: The first step before consuming any data for analysis in IRIS MS Pro is that of data processing called the “Sales data cleanup”. In this step basis the limit defined by the user as an input, IRIS MS Pro cleans up the most liquidated (discounted) sales of each attribute group in respective stores. While doing so, IRIS MS Pro also modifies the sales data with smart algorithms to normalize sales drops due to unavailability during the sales period selected.
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Q: How do you plan to adopt this forecasting tool for categories other than Fashion – FMCG, White Goods, Accessories & Cosmetics?
A:
IRIS MS Pro will work perfectly well for categories other than Fashion.
We have tested IRIS MS Pro forecasting for FMCG, White goods, Accessories & Cosmetics categories along with Fashion and the results have been satisfactory.
Q: Why in Iris MS Pro line of product we use FTP to transfer data rather than have API integration?
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Assortment Planning
Q: How is IRIS MS Pro going to work for online channels? Is it even useful on that front?
A: IRIS MS Pro can be used for online channels as well. Each channel can be created as a store and sales transactions can be uploaded against the same. The tool does its job of identifying top sellers, recommending size rations, projecting sales mix, splitting revenue targets, and providing sales projections. If required, it can also do replenishment for each channel.
Q: How does IRIS MS Pro help in selection for scenarios where orders are placed by external buyers? For example, Shoppers Stop stores where buyers over there decide what a brand gets to keep.
A: IRIS MS Pro identifies top sellers for each partner and recommends the correct mix of attribute groups in which the merchandise should be bought for each store. Since this is a data-driven insight, it is important to pass on the same to the buyers when they place orders, in order to influence their decision making to improve sales which is beneficial for both the parties.
Q: Can more attributes be added to get the idea of performance and direction on what to produce
A: IRIS MS Pro currently supports brand, sub-brand, gender and price bucket as the only levels of attributes, but these can be used smartly to incorporate more attributes, for example in Denims, Fit can be incorporated by creating Slim-fit Jeans as a subcategory within Denims. If there is a requirement for more detailed accuracy – including more attributes, it is recommended to move to IRIS MS Pro enterprise which is capable of handling up to 17 attributes. Below is a video on how to do it –
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Q: Business does not have a concept of NOOS, is it mandatory to have NOOS or can we get predictions across fashion clusters only?
A: The tool can identify top sellers and it is recommended to reorder the same, but it is completely a user’s call to take advantage of this insight.
Q: Can IRIS MS Pro handle separate forecasting/planning for core and fashion styles? Here the core products are the ones defined by brands.
A: IRIS MS Pro can handle this problem in two ways. Firstly, if the requirement is the get the overall demand for core clusters and fashion clusters separately, the user can concatenate the Gender attribute with the “Core/Fashion” term. For e.g. Men’s Core and Men’s fashion can be two separate genders. This way, their clustering will be different. On the second hand, if the requirement is to predict the demand of individual core styles, then it is recommended to put the core style code name as one of the attributes so that single style clusters are created for each core style and all analysis is done – outputs given at a style level.
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Q: How are exit sized determined by IRISMS Pro?
A: During the data processing part, IRIS MS Pro asks for user’s input as a benchmark to exit certain sizes in respective stores where their sales contribution has been below the benchmark. For e.g, if the benchmark is 2%, IRIS MS Pro will recommend most sizes contributing below this 2% benchmark of sales at the product group level (Brand-category-gender) for that store.
Q: Different brands and different categories have different pricing strategies (across EOSS/full price/online discounting). Then how does the liquidation strategy work?
A: IRIS MS Pro works at an attribute group + store level which is more levels below the brand – category level. So, the liquidation cleanup of historical data analyzed also happens at those levels and the price bucket mix within a brand – category – sub-category is also given as an output that can be used to correct pricing strategies directionally. As far as different periods are concerned, IRIS MS Pro gives the flexibility to the user to choose the analysis period for every output, so a person can choose a historical EOSS period for
future EOSS prediction and likewise for full price.
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A: For every attribute group, for each store Iris MS Pro can recommend the contribution and the sales projections.
Q: How to identify loss of sale opportunities due to
Stock unavailability
Wrong fitment of Color/ Fabric/ Fit/Size Set in a store-partner-region though stock is present
Mismatch in Sell Plan & Planogram, i.e. planogram provided is less than the rev split output for a month
A: Iris MS Pro helps you identify the loss of sales opportunities and helps you correct it by optimizing what, when, how much to buy and where to showcase the inventory
Stock unavailability - We have a report showing Rate of Sale, Inventory Days on Hand (DOH) & Sell Through Rate (STR) = Sales/(Sales+Current Stock) or Sales/Inventory Dispatches. We capture these metrics at a store-style level. This helps us identify based on high STR & high ROS & low DoH that this style was a good performer and went out of stock. This means there is a sales loss due to stock unavailability and you need to re-order/replenish this style in this store.
Wrong fitment of color/fabric/fit/size set etc in a store though stock is present - This can also be tracked daily since we have a STR, DOH & ROS report at multiple levels - including product attributes. This will give an insight into what set of attributes is performing and understocked (showing loss of sales) & what set of attributes are not performing and overstocked (non-movers / slow sellers)
Mismatch in Sell Plan & Planogram - You can run Revenue split report of the tool and compare to your planogram manually, its a matter of 5-10 minutes, given that planograms change less frequently (not daily)
These reports help you correct your loss of sales opportunities during the season and also ensure that the correction happens when you plan for the next season by planning more for better performing products and less/eliminate non-movers / slow sellers.
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Q: Tool is quite relevant for brands that have their own EBOs as they can use it for distribution, as they will have complete control on what stocks to send to stores, and if they are doing it manually.
A: Yes, for one’s own store control on execution is 100% but even for external partners, IRIS MS Pro is useful to keep a check and validate the allocations and replenishment. It has been helpful in the past to highlight gaps and course correct the stock situation even at partner stores of brands on IRISMS Pro.
Q: How does IRIS MS Pro maintain correct merchandise assortment at stores while allocating/replenishing styles based on individual style performance? Is it possible that the last style allocated for a store-category due to planogram gap constraint is a lower-ranked style instead of another available higher-ranked style?
A: This is one of the USPs of IRIS MS Pro where IRIS MS Pro takes the planogram input from the user at a store-category level and intelligently breaks it down in the backend in the right assortment of product attribute groups. Due to this, the planogram constraints work at a level below category. This ensures that if there are two styles of different sales performance, but one of them is more important to complete the recommended assortment, then that style is given priority for allocation. This check is dropped if the overall planogram input is still not met and the tool ensures that the stocks are ultimately fulfilled at a store-category level planogram.
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Q: How can I create a planogram for online channels?
A: As online channels do not have any display constraints, creating a planogram is not based on physical constraint but based on the forward cover that the business wants to carry. Since IRIS MS Pro gives you projected sales quantity for upcoming months after breaking down your revenue targets, you can take that as a direct output from the tool and sum up x no.of future months’ projected sales quantity you need to take as a cover and use it as the planogram quantity. In case you want to work on the backward cover, i.e., basis recent historical sales, you can simply take the historical x duration sales as your planogram quantity constraint. So, for example, a subcategory of polo T-shirt, if you project to sell 300 pieces per month on the channel and you want to keep a forward cover of 3 months inventory with the channel. Then your planogram will be 300*3 = 900 pieces.
As a brand, if you plan to keep 50 pieces in each style, this will become the size set for a polo T-shirt.
Q: Does the tool support multi-warehouse set-up? For example, the demand of Haryana/Karnataka warehouses in terms of taste of customers/size ratios might be different. Can this tool help understand the demand across different warehouses?
A: IRIS MS Pro does not support multi-warehouse distribution and warehouse to warehouse transfers. IRIS MS Pro enterprise can handle a multi-warehouse to store distribution but that too has limitations on the warehouse to warehouse transfers. As far as understanding demand patterns (attribute group mix and size) is concerned, that can be easily provided by IRISMS Pro, given that the inputs are also provided at the same level.
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Q: While distributing is there a feature for coordinates (sending a top/a skirt together)?
A: No, such a feature is not there in the tool as it does all the distribution based purely on the merit of individual styles and recommended assortment for each store.
Q: Does IRIS MS Pro ever breach planograms in distribution?
A: No, IRIS MS Pro will never exceed a store-category level planogram constraint.
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Q: Do you consider the expiry date of the products? Does it handle the FIFO distribution?
A: No, IRIS MS Pro does not take expiry dates of products as an input
Q: Will this work for primary replenishment (distributor to channel partners) and secondary replenishment (partners to end consumers)?
A: IRIS MS Pro will work best where secondary sales data and store inventory is available. In most cases of distribution, this information is difficult to get – not to mention the stock visibility at the distributor’s warehouse is another complication which as of now IRIS MS Pro does not handle.
Q: instead of the number of pieces, can we input DOH cover in a planogram?
A: no, currently the tool takes only quantity in pieces as the capacity constraint in the planogram. A user can convert the DOH cover in pieces and upload them before running distribution. In case the user needs the tool to help create planogram basis DOH input, then that feature is available in the Enterprise version of IRISMS Pro.
Q: In case of limited inventory how does the tool determine which option will go to which store ?
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A: As a business call brand can segregate their pool of online or offline inventory before running Distribution module. Also, with the help of Iris MS Pro demand projections it can plan for the inventory.
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A: Yes, if stores has a separate storage capacity to stock online inventory Iris MS Pro will treat it as a Warehouse/Distribution center.
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Q: Apart from product outputs, are there reports where we can see the brand’s own data?
A: yes, there is a separate BI module in the product where a set of reports are there for analyzing the brands’ actual sales data. These reports have been made keeping in mind the key insights a user would like to draw from the data uploaded on IRIS MS Pro and cover most possible views of importance. In case a user feels there is a need for an additional view, he/she can reach out to IRIS MS Pro customer support and if the team finds it as an important and doable view, it can be added.
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A: In tool its calculated two ways:
Sell-through excluding warehouse stocks- (Sell-through for stores)
Sell-through including warehouse stocks- (Sell-through for Company)
Sell-through at an Attribute level
Pricing
Q: Is IRISMS Pro/IRIS MS Pro Enterprise suited for SMB (Small Medium Businesses)? Do you have pricing for SMB customers?
A:
IRIS MS Pro is suited for SMB customers and IRISMS Pro-Enterprise is suited for Large scale businesses.
IRIS MS Pro Pricing – Depends upon business size and is negotiable. Connect with us for details
Q: What about the features of IRIS MS Pro and IRIS MS Pro Enterprise license – a comparison chart will help
A: IRIS MS Pro v/s IRIS MS Pro Enterprise Comparison – Click Here
Q: When we buy a license say for eg. Fashion business, then can we use it for all businesses – Fashion all brands, FMCG, others or for every business we need to buy a separate license?
A:
IRIS MS Pro offers a unique concept of Project. You have the flexibility to create a different project within the same license for every business – Fashion or non-Fashion, thereby handling all brands under the same license.
Q: Do you have a performance-based licensing model wherein we pay you basis key B&M KPI’s like inventory turns/aging/stock availability at the right store at the right time?
A: No, IRIS MS Pro is a pure-play self usable SaaS model with standard pricing, connect with us for more details. You can use it for topseller management, planning, distribution, regional utilization, BI & Return Management. At this cost, you can work on unlimited data, unlimited sales channels, brands and styles. There are no other hidden costs like onboarding or support costs. On top of this we keep on upgrading our product and release new features almost every 2 weeks, this comes as an additional benefit with no extra costs involved.