Brands and retailers are enhancing their omnichannel strategies to create a bridge between digital and physical experiences. Websites, social media, and apps mature over time and progressively integrate physical stores in their offering. While E-commerce solutions, or online gamification for retail are now largely spread among the industry, softwares to create stores in 2D and 3D and manage store space, called planogram software, are mostly known, and used, by VM professionals.
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Planogram software tools are essential for brands and retailers to optimize store openings, product layout and consistent branding. They help plan strategic displays and effective product placements to not only maximize sales, but to improve customer experience. Today, as omni-channel retail accelerates, brands with brick and mortar stores need to digitise their visual merchandising processes in order to gain agility and ensure brand consistency throughout their distribution channels. Paper planograms or spreadsheets are no longer efficient to guide field teams through perfect store execution. They also limit the capacity of analysis of product performance.
From comprehensive merchandising solutions to affordable subscriptions, here are seven planogramming solutions to consider according to your markets’ needs and budgets.
IWD
IWD is a visual merchandising software company based in Europe with offices in the US and Asia. With more than 20-years of experience, IWD software allows brands to create 2D and 3D guidelines online, share localised planograms, ensure store execution and check compliance on the field. IWD provides two suites of solutions: an affordable version for 2D planograming needs and a more comprehensive 2D & 3D solution to create, execute, and analyse a brand’s merchandising strategy. Initially specialised in the luxury, beauty, and watch & jewelry industries, they cover many sectors including fashion, footwear, wine & spirits and consumer goods today. The company is trusted by more than 300 brands, such as L’Oréal, Charles & Keith, Avon, Edrington, Coty, Shiseido, Levi’s, Patagonia, The North Face and many more. They have recently been awarded with the retail most innovative solution by Retail Republik.
Visual Retailing
Netherlands-based retail technology provider Visual Retailing is specialised in interactive 3D solutions as well as innovative product assortment and space planning tools for retail chains and wholesalers. Well known for its Mockshop software specialised in the fashion and home decor industries, they count more than a hundred clients such as Adidas, JD, M&S, Alinea, and more. One of the powerful features of MockShop is its capability to easily import data from any of the back-end systems including product information, wholesale and retail costs, and supplier information. The company also has a field execution solution to deliver visual merchandising guidelines to individual stores for more efficient execution and simple compliance feedback. In 2020, IWD acquired 100 percent of Visual Retailing.
One Door
One Door is an American company specialising in visual merchandising and store planning. They help retailers plan, execute, and analyse their shelf strategy. To meet today’s store demands, One Door uses new technology like mobile, cloud, and AI to transform how retailers create retail experiences. One Door is specialised in mass market industries such as food and grocery and consumer electronics. They work with clients such as Woolworths, Cox, Cricket, Best Buy and more.
Quant Retail
Quant Retail is a Czech company founded in 2001 that has developed a solution for retail spaces and category management. Mainly present in the East European market, they have several clients in the pharmaceutical and food & grocery industry. Their goal has been to create an integrated system in which users are able to collaborate throughout the entire process of managing retail spaces, categories and ranges of products. Their customers include: Ebl-Naturkost, Mconomy, Dr. Max, Sklizeno, and more. As their solution is mainly intended for mass market manufacturers, they also integrate price tag management linked to planograms.
RelexSolutions
Founded in 2005 by a team of researchers in Helsinki, RelexSolutions focuses on using digital data to optimize various decisions made in the retail industry. The company’s initial business focused on forecasting the demand for individual products in individual stores and used those forecasts to calculate the needed inventory levels in central and regional warehouses. In 2016, Relex acquired British company Galleria RTS, a producer of software tools for planning and optimising product ranges and shelf layouts in stores, depicted in planograms. Today, the company works mainly with supermarket and pharmacy chains.
DotActiv
DotActiv is a South-African company specialising in category management. The company provides a simple on-premise solution for Microsoft Windows at different affordable prices. The software allows teams to manage and create planograms, clusters, assortments, and floor plans. They introduce themselves as a perfect solution for beginners, with simple tools and online academy. Their clients range from food and grocery industries to small independent manufacturers such as Jacobs Douwe Egberts, Winners, CNA, Jet and more.
SmartDraw
SmartDraw is a drawing program initially specialised in diagrams. They have a planogram and store layout creation vertical that delivers an easy solution by doing much of the drawing work. SmartDraw provides quick-start templates for over 70 different diagram types, from flowcharts to floor plans. The tool allows users to access ready-made symbols for thousands of common products and align and arrange them on the shelf. For all their different verticals their customers include companies such as Pepsi, Dole, Nestlé, Kraft and more.
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Planogram Builder
Switzerland-based company ZVisuel was founded in 2001, inspired by the growing potential in 3D interactive applications. The company had the idea to use this communication, already adopted by video games, in various new domains, especially in business and industrial environments. They focused on using 3D technology to create planograms. PlanogramBuilder allows brands to affordably design, evaluate, optimize and communicate their space planning. The solution comes as a subscription-based web-connected application for Windows PC’s, and their clients include food and grocery chains and consumer electronics, with clients like Abudawood Group, Britvic, Nutricia, King Arthur Flour and more.
