Oracle Retail Assortment and Space Optimization Cloud Service (ASO) is a cloud-based solution that enables retailers to optimize their assortments to store and cluster specific needs to maximize return on space, sales, and gross profit while maintaining visual merchandising standards and supply chain considerations.

ASO uses advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to create virtual planograms that optimize the selection and arrangement of products within stores. It considers information such as available space, product dimensions, expected demand, replenishment schedules, merchandising rules, fixture space, and category goals to generate the best possible product assortment for each store or cluster .

ASO integrates seamlessly with other Oracle Retail solutions, such as Category Management and Planning Optimization (CMPO), Retail Analytics, and Space Planning. It supports various fixture types, such as shelves, pegboards, freezer chests, and shelf/pegboard combinations. It also allows users to run optimizations at either the store level or the space cluster level, which are ad hoc groups of stores that have similar characteristics.

Key Benefits of ASO

Some of the key benefits of using ASO are:

• Improved space productivity: ASO helps retailers increase sales per square foot by optimizing the allocation of space to products based on their performance and potential.
• Enhanced customer satisfaction: ASO helps retailers offer the right products at the right locations to meet customer preferences and expectations.
• Reduced inventory costs: ASO helps retailers reduce excess inventory and out-of-stocks by aligning product assortments with demand patterns and replenishment cycles.
• Increased operational efficiency: ASO helps retailers automate and streamline the assortment planning process by providing data-driven recommendations and visualizations.
• Faster time to market: ASO helps retailers launch new products and promotions faster by enabling rapid testing and validation of different scenarios.

Key Features of ASO

Some of the key features of ASO are:

• Statistical forecasting: ASO uses sophisticated algorithms to forecast product demand at the store or cluster level, taking into account factors such as seasonality, trends, promotions, cannibalization, and halo effects.
• Demand transference: ASO calculates the impact of adding or dropping products from the assortment on the demand of other products in the same category or subcategory.
• Business rules: ASO allows users to define various business rules to guide the optimization process, such as minimum or maximum number of products, minimum or maximum facings per product, minimum or maximum depth per product, product adjacency rules, product grouping rules, product ranking rules, etc.
• Planogram generation: ASO creates optimal planograms for each store or cluster based on the forecasted demand, business rules, product dimensions, fixture space, and category goals. The planograms are displayed in a graphical interface that allows users to view and edit them easily.
• Optimization runs: ASO allows users to create and manage multiple optimization runs for different scenarios or objectives. Users can compare the results of different runs using various metrics, such as sales, gross profit, space productivity index (SPI), etc.
• Assortment analysis: ASO provides various reports and dashboards to help users analyze the performance of the optimized assortments. Users can drill down into different levels of detail, such as store, cluster, category, subcategory, product, etc.
• Assortment finalization: ASO allows users to finalize and export the optimized assortments to other Oracle Retail solutions or external systems for further processing or execution.