Why Legacy Retail Planning Holds You Back

Many large retailers still rely on disconnected tools and manual workflows, from ERP data exports to massive spreadsheets, to build their merchandise plans. This patchwork approach creates silos and wastes valuable time.

Forward-thinking retailers are complimenting, not replacing, their systems with cloud-based planning platforms like Toolio. Toolio eliminates manual workflows and workarounds by centralizing planning, improving speed and forecast accuracy, and enabling faster, data-driven decisions. It’s a powerful, built-for-retail planning tool that unlocks real-time agility and maximizes the value of your existing workflows and systems.

This shift couldn’t come at a better time. In a recent McKinsey survey of retailers, merchants reported spending ~65% of their time merely gathering data, managing exceptions, and “firefighting,” leaving only one-third for strategic analysis. This imbalance comes at a price: from missed sales, excess inventory and markdowns, to the inability to respond to market trends.

Retailers themselves recognize this is impractical: nearly half of retail executives in one benchmark selected “reduce our reliance on spreadsheets” as a top remedy for improving planning processes.

Why? Because critical operational data (POS sales, inventory levels, pricing, etc.) too often lives in disconnected systems. When planning is done by copying that data into docs or uploading CSVs, inventory accuracy suffers and errors are common.

In short, legacy tech and siloed planning tools hinder decision-making and slow reaction times. The data “truth” becomes fragmented, forcing teams into endless reconciliation instead of agile merchandising.

Stat: For a $1B retailer, a 1% planning error can mean $10M in at-risk revenue (missed sales or excess inventory).

How Poor Inventory Management Hurts Retailer’s Revenue

Disconnected systems aren’t the only problem. Even if the overall plan is right, poor allocation can break the system. Nearly 45% of retailers say product-level inventory imbalances are a major issue (RSR). 44% say the same about store-level imbalances.

What’s the cost of this mismatch?

• Nike projected a mid-teens sales decline for Q4 2025 after a 9% drop the previous quarter. To clear excess inventory, they discounted aggressively, cutting gross margins by 400–500 basis points. (WSJ)
• Gap Inc. reported a 3.6% inventory increase in 2024, building up excess stock that is expected to pressure margins and force additional markdowns. (LinkedIn)
• Kohl’s saw sales fall 7.2% in fiscal 2024, with comparable sales down 6.5%, despite efforts to better manage inventory levels. (Kohl’s)
• Funko took a $29.3M inventory write-down in 2024 and slashed total inventory by 20%, but still faced margin pressure from slow-moving products. (Funko, Yahoo Finance)
• ASOS wrote off £100M of unsold inventory in 2024, struggling to align stock with shifting consumer demand. (Financial News)

Stat: Every percentage point of revenue lost to allocation missteps is $20M for a $2B brand. If you’re not reallocating based on real-time trends, you’re leaving millions on the table.

Inaccurate Forecasts Lead to Lost Sales and Excess Stock

Forecasting in outdated systems is still a major challenge for retailers and the cost is high. McKinsey reports a 30% average error rate in demand forecasting. That means for a $500M assortment, $150M of product is over- or under-ordered.

Retail Systems Research found that only 32% of retailers feel confident in their ability to keep up with changing customer behavior. Most are frustrated by the inability to predict how pricing, assortments, and promotions will perform and it shows in the results.

According to the IHL Group, inventory distortion (out-of-stocks + overstocks) cost retailers $1.77 trillion globally in 2023:

• $1.2 trillion lost from stockouts / missed sales
• $562 billion from markdowns on excess inventory

That’s about 7% of total global retail sales lost each year because forecasts managed in outdated systems aren’t accurate and inventory doesn’t match real demand.

If your forecast is off by 30%, a third of your assortment is either gone too soon or gathering dust. Either way, margin suffers.

Slow, Inaccurate Planning = Missed Opportunities

Planning cycles are often too long. 32% of retailers say their time to volume is too slow (RSR). If it takes weeks to update seasonal plans, you miss demand windows. And missed windows mean markdowns.

• Macy’s struggled with elevated inventory into 2024, admitting that slower inventory adjustments led to heavier markdowns during key seasonal selling periods like holiday, directly impacting profitability. (CNBC)
  
• Abercrombie & Fitch lowered its 2025 sales forecast after delays in adjusting assortments and inventory levels to adapt to shifting consumer demand. (US News)

A 3-week delay in updating plans means lower sell-through. That’s margin lost on every product drop.

How Toolio Helps You Move Faster, Smarter, and with Less Risk

Toolio replaces disconnected spreadsheets and legacy tools with a cloud-based planning platform that’s easy to adopt and simple to use. Your teams get up and running fast, with a single source of truth across financial plans, assortment, forecasts, inventory, and in-season performance. That means faster decisions, more accurate plans, and real results without a long learning curve.

Here’s how Toolio helps:

• Plan in one place: No more juggling spreadsheets. Toolio connects your ERP, POS, and supply chain systems so everything updates in real time.
  
• Improve forecast accuracy: Tournament forecasting models use historical data and current trends to project demand more precisely.
  
• Optimize inventory: Get visibility into product- and location-level inventory so you can adjust quickly when trends shift.
  
• Shorten planning cycles: With workflows built for collaboration and speed, teams can react in days—not weeks.
  
• Reduce markdowns: Better planning means better buy quantities and more balanced allocations, so you sell more at full price.

Purpose built for retail, Toolio is easy to use, flexible to your workflows, integrates with your existing systems, and delivers value fast, so you can start seeing results without a long ramp-up.

The Bottom Line: Modernize Retail Planning Now

If you manage more than $500M in revenue, sticking with legacy platforms comes at a real cost:

• Lost sales from stockouts
• Margin hits from markdowns
• Delays that miss market demand

Modern planning platforms change that. They connect your data, speed up decision-making, increase forecast accuracy, reduce planning cycle time by 30–50% and improve forecast accuracy by 25–40%.

Even a 2% improvement in planning accuracy for a $1B brand is $20M in annual value. Better allocation using real-time data can boost sell-through by 5–10% and cut markdowns.

Make the Shift. See the Results.

You don’t have to overhaul everything overnight, but the next step is clear: upgrade to a modern planning solution that unifies disconnected tools and processes. With the right platform in place, you can:

• Build fast and flexible built-for-retail processes
• Leverage accurate forecasting tools that learn and adapt
• Optimize inventory allocation in real time
• Accelerate the plan-to-execute cycle

This shift doesn’t just reduce risk, it gives your teams more time to focus on strategy instead of data wrangling. That’s how you protect revenue, improve margins, and stay ahead of market changes.

If this sounds like the kind of shift your team has been needing, we'd love to show you how Toolio can fit into your existing workflows and help you get more out of your planning process. Speak to an expert today!