JDA Software Group Inc., The Supply Chain Company®, announced the release of JDA Shelf-Connected Cloud, a revolutionary new solution that offers the unparalleled scale needed to connect manufacturers’ supply chains to the retail shelf.

JDA Shelf-Connected Cloud is designed to help supplier and retailer trading partners effectively collaborate at the shelf level to improve on-shelf availability, remove unnecessary inventory across enterprises and set new strategies that leverage cost savings across the entire value chain. Trading partners that collaborate using this new paradigm will be able to offer their joint consumers a new level of competitive pricing by connecting their supply chains.

In a shelf-connected supply chain, suppliers collaborate with their distribution and retail customers to plan an optimal product assortment and planogram for each store or store cluster, then develop and synchronize their demand and inventory replenishment plans driven by consumer sales. This framework integrates a supplier’s planning and execution processes with a retailer’s planning and execution processes to better align all processes with consumer demand. By having a view of the cross-enterprise supply chain flows, partners can develop strategies that consider the cost savings across enterprises and leverage it to deliver more value and innovation to their consumers.

Suppliers can collaborate with retailers to create a time-phased retail order plan. Many large retailers today still struggle with developing or completing accurate, bottom-up time-phased order plans that are driven from shelf sell-through. So, suppliers who leverage a shelf-connected solution can strategically elevate their partnership levels with retailers. Benefits of the solution include the ability to:

• Scale to the shelf-level
• Deliver fast time to value by leveraging the cloud
• Quickly see the effects of assortment, space and supply chain strategies and their impact on performance and financial results
• Deliver a collaboration platform to drive efficiencies across enterprises and their inter-connected supply chains
• Align the people, processes and tools necessary to focus attention on the critical few actions that will drive significant and immediate results
• Develop optimal supply chain, promotion and pricing plans driven from shelf-level demand signals

As part of the comprehensive JDA® Shelf-Connected Cloud solution suite, JDA Software today also announced the release of JDA® Collaborative Shelf Planning & Analytics. Suppliers managing sell-through at the shelf must be equipped to handle the associated exponential increase in planning intersections and decisions. JDA’s supply chain planning architecture is unique in its proven ability to scale to meet the challenges of driving decisions from the shelf. JDA Collaborative Shelf Planning & Analytics enables companies to manage and transform mountains of data into actionable information. This solution drives visibility and enables analytics such as out-of-stock detection, sell-through analysis and inventory performance directly from the shelf.

“In today’s ultra-competitive markets, the ability to manage products across multiple channels and the entire product lifecycle becomes essential to maintaining profitability and competitiveness,” said Fred Baumann, vice president, industry strategies, JDA Software. “By leveraging shelf-connected supply chain practices, trading partners become aligned on not just the next order, but on the larger horizon of orders. The insights associated with these activities are leveraged by both the supplier and retailer to drive higher consumer satisfaction in a mutually beneficial and profitable way.”