Retailers already understand what's necessary to grow their brands: right product mix, right timing, right margin. All depends on how effectively teams use assortment planning software. Yet many platforms fall short where flexibility matters most. Merchandising experts see these gaps daily and need tools that close them. It's no surprise that AI-powered assortment planning is leading the change. According to Grand View Research, the global artificial intelligence in retail market size was estimated at USD 11.61 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 40.74 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 23.0% from 2025 to 2030.
With AI, assortment planning software becomes more than a digital worksheet. Planners depend on it to determine what reaches shelves, how assortments adapt to demand shifts and whether execution aligns with targets. Functional gaps lead to bloated inventory, fragmented performance and reactive decisions. Strong connections to an AI-Decisioning Platform help eliminate those inefficiencies.
Addressing the gaps legacy platforms left behind
Traditional tools struggle to support product lifecycle management, real-time demand forecasting or store clustering without complex manual workarounds. Modern software, like assortment planning platforms, closes those gaps by enabling flexible store-specific assortments and unified commerce planning across digital and physical stores.
Supporting teams with action-ready features
Teams succeed when tools enable decisions—not just track inputs. Core features of high-value decisioning tools always include:
- AI-powered assortment planning responsive to shopper and channel shifts.
- Advanced analytics that flag slow-moving SKUs before markdowns.
- Rolling calendars for mid-cycle, off-cycle or in-season planning.
- Supply chain integration to account for inbound timelines or vendor shifts.
Coordinating planning across every channel
Single-channel thinking creates misalignment. A cross-functional view strengthens outcomes across the board.
An effective platform provides:
- Margin-level views to support margin optimization on active SKUs.
- Tiered logic for pinpointed SKU management by store format.
- Historical-to-future insights to validate sales prediction accuracy.
From static data to movement
Decisioning stalls when data stays locked in dashboards. Modern planning platforms prioritize data-driven decision making with functionality that shortens the path from insight to action.
Teams benefit when customer-centric assortments reflect regional shifts, behavior clusters and velocity trends. Flexible workflows allow category owners and planners to shift direction without reengineering their tools. Retail P&L statements often expose gaps in plans versus reality, which is why visibility into retail life cycles through stronger software strengthens decisions across both categories and channels.
Handling seasonal and trend volatility
Category timelines rarely follow static plans. New launches, supplier issues and channel volatility create friction when there isn't a system ready to respond.
Effective assortment planning software supports:
- Scenario planning for delayed shipments or supplier gaps and automatic recommendations for rebalancing high-velocity SKUs.
- Built-in triggers for inter-store transfers and allocation shifts.
Consider the software support team
Software alone isn’t enough. Strong vendors bring implementation and advisory support that spans the full planning lifecycle. With invent.ai’s Hub Model, our team of 200+ researchers and retail AI experts, work alongside client teams—before, during and after rollout—to ensure the platform keeps delivering lasting value. The best partners align with weekly and monthly planning cadences, support both top-down and bottom-up workflows and integrate seamlessly with existing planning and inventory optimization tools.
What to avoid
Look past flashy interfaces. Avoid solutions that require planners to mirror work in spreadsheets. Skip platforms that lack support for multi-region store clustering or real-time in-season planning.
Disconnected tools produce disconnected assortments. Systems that unify SKU management, planogram management and sales prediction within a shared logic layer help teams scale faster with fewer handoffs.
Grow your retail brand by partnering with invent.ai
Modern retail depends on tools that can move with the business. The right assortment planning software delivers precision, flexibility and alignment across teams. Connected solutions anchored by multi-agentic AI help reduce complexity while strengthening decision confidence.
Connect with an expert at invent.ai to explore how assortment systems can better reflect real business movement.