Optimising Your Workforce Workshop | MANGO | PI Apparel

First of all, let me introduce myself quickly. I am Edoardo. I'm from Italy, but I live in Spain. It's now 10 years. I've worked in this industry almost, well, all my career, my professional career, almost 15 years. And I covered merchandise planning, allocation, product management. A little bit of product development, and I've worked in different companies in France and in Spain. So once I presented myself, I would like to present a little bit who I work for. I work for Mango, which is a company based in Barcelona. Just closed our best year in history. And here, we have a little bit of figures. We cover all the productive categories. So we have quite a good complexity in terms of genders we cover, in terms of countries we work in, and channels, and type of businesses we are in each of those countries and channels. So I don't want to bore you with those numbers. So we are just— It's just to mention that a great part of the business is from women's department, which is our historical product type or product category. And I am in charge of the menswear, which is growing really fast and now reached— is expected to reach almost €400 million of turnover this year. In Mango, I am in charge of merchandise planning and allocation teams for menswear. So Mango is in a very, very good shape. We are now working on a strategic plan that is driving a little bit us in terms of roadmap at all the levels. To simplify it, we can simplify it in 4 priorities. They are elevate, expand, earn, of course, and empower. Here we have some details. Our objective is to grow a lot. Grow a lot how? While, well, expanding, expanding a lot in terms of channels, in terms of market, of countries. And of course, by earning. And a part of earning is, of course, the functions of improving in in merchandise planning. So I thought this should be like a workshop. I don't know if you want to participate or not. We will see. But my purpose is a little bit to share my point of view and of course, to listen from you too. There are a lot of professionals and experts in merchandise planning, stakeholders in terms of new technologies and solutions. I think it would be enriching to share about it. So I would structure it by defining a little bit the context inside and I mean globally and specifically merchandise planning. I would like to define with you or to define what is my point of view in terms of what are merchandise planners doing today or better said, what they have been doing until before COVID let we say. And then what are the transformation that were going on and what are the risks and rewards we can identify in terms of technological revolution, of course, AI, ML, and all the technological revolution we are facing. So getting to it from a global context, I will not bore you by reading all the presentation I wrote in and I thought better in logos. We're facing a technological revolution. We are all— we are all agree with that. Okay, we have a possibility, a power of calculation and volume and a data volume management that was just a dream like 10 years ago. We are facing a lot of disruptive event. I put a virus, coronavirus, of course. I put global volatility in general. We would like to have less, but we have wars and crises at a global level that drive us every day. And these causes that we have reshaping global trading and global logistics. That forced to reshape our business models also and to generate a different scenario evaluation every day. Then we have a lot of regulatory— excuse me for the Italian accent. I will go more Italian to be fluid and talk with my hands, but I will be straight to the point. Regulatory in terms of, of course, sustainability, but also in terms of pricing. For example, in Europe, we have a lot of pricing constraints. So we have to be able to manage that, include them in our plans, and to deliver solution that work and improve from the past results. And in terms of customer and sales channels, even both online and retail, they're facing a complete revolution. The customer is changing a lot his behavior, and we have to follow him and to forecast what his behavior will be. And the channels, well, they are thriving. They are passing through also their technological— their own technological revolution. I think about, for example, one for all, RFID technology and the data. That we can use from RFID. This merchandise planning has its own consequences, right? So we have technological power. We have technological opportunities to get power. So what we can do? We can manage a bigger volume of data. We can manage a bigger volume of decision. We can go through a decision tree in an instant that before wasn't even thinkable. The pandemic taught us that we have to be very elastic in thinking of what could happen. Before, what could happen is, okay, my collection is not working. I will have a deviation, or I have some production problem that provokes a deviation versus my plan, but my plan still exists. What I think, what I learned from the pandemic is that your plan exists today, but you're not sure you have a plan tomorrow, and you have to make a plan fast. Then you have to cross multiple scenarios or multiple effects. Okay, we have global volatility, we have pandemics, we have logistics. Imagine what, how many scenarios we have to consider, including Forex, Forex movements that can change your results at the end of your plan. We can have logistical disruption like container crisis after the pandemic or because of the Red Sea crisis, for example. And we can have also regulatory changes that make what was a winning strategy, for example, to have your basic in this country and so on, to be discussed. And so you have to reshape the way you offer this to your client. For your client, this will be transparent. But internally, we have a strategic mission, which is to do the same product for a client or to do what the client wants, but in a completely different way. So let's say what— We are what merchandise planning used to be required to have some of those, let's call it talent bricks, some of those skills that I try to order it from soft skills to hard skills and value generation, from low to high. So we see we have a core, of course, in strategic sensitivity, reliable, to be a reliable quantitative partner to your buying or commercial teams following how you work. Of course, to have analytical skills, but also to be creative in terms of analysis. To be creative in terms of analysis, it is, I mean, to ask yourself or ask ourselves questions that haven't been asked before. So what I think is very important of this of this graph, of this chart also, it is to see that we have a lot of capacity or energy or brain energy put in very hard skills of very low value generation. I'm thinking about to know very well how the ERP works, which data is crossing between cubes and so on. Value generation for a machine learning, zero. To be an Excel master. Okay, you have to be an Excel master. You have to be up to date in terms of how it works. But the real value of a merchandise planner is not to be a genius in Excel or to make gigantic Excels. It is to, well, to bring value, to bring value and to help in strategical decisions that are made more and more and more and more frequently. And then you have soft skills that are really, really, really adding value. That's to be a good problem solver, to be able to communicate your strategies or your point of view in a constructive way to all the stakeholders, and to have some business awareness of which business I'm working into, and so on. And to have some tribal knowledge, which is an expression that I took and I like very much because it explains a bit this kind of particular way we have, the fashion brands, to consider ourselves like special tribes. We are unique. Okay? So, but we have to know as a merchandise planner what this tribal knowledge means in terms of real strategic difference with your competitor, not with just will or volunteer to be different. And then, of course, you have to be precise, a good commercial acumen, and so on. As this is structured as a workshop, I'd like to ask you if you have some suggestion of what do you think the new layer of, let's say, of skills is if we consider all we saw in terms of context globally and technologically. So if you want to share some of them, then we can compare with— with what I prepared as a point of view. Yes?

For me, the outstanding issue would be the strategic sensitivity. Just because what we heard earlier is that people need to learn what question to ask. So where do we want to go as a brand? So then it comes in the good tribal knowledge would also move up from that perspective. And that you really live, I don't want to call it a bubble, but it's a bubble for your brands so that you put yourself in that position and therefore the data is necessary. And that's what merchandise planners should definitely do.

Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree with you. To me, strategy is a keyword of what is happening to the figure of the merchandise planners. In the organizations since the frequency of disruptive event augmented. Completely agree with you. Anyone else? No? Well, I share my list. OK? So my list is a little bit— I try to be a little bit more— to put emphasis on the change of the merchandise planning figure. Merchantise planners, I think, are one of the figures that are gaining strategical weight and importance in decision-making since all this start to happen. And I think that we can sum to the, let's say, old but gold skills, some more skills or more How can I call it? Some more layers on already existing skills. I go in an order I like, but it's not the only order. It's not more important than the less. For example, they have to be good communicator, but they also have to make a leadership exercise. And for leadership exercise, I refer that they have to be enough influence in their organization to make other stakeholders take decision that go in the direction of the better plan they think they have. So they are moving from executor, okay, I make a good presentation of what the sales would be and so on, that they are now like strategical, let me say, internal consultants for all the organization. So they have to be good leaders. They have to be good in— this leadership has to push them in executing cohesive strategy. Cohesive strategy between what? Between different departments. They have to be cross-functional, cross-trained, and they have to be aware of what their colleagues from allocation or from buying department or from import department do, much more than before. It's not just give me a template of what the timings will be and hasta luego. No, no. Now it's every day things are changing. No? So they have to be reactive and constructive facing disruptive events like— like for example COVID has been or the container crisis, they have to be a force of proposition, okay? Because what we will have, it will be people that will be maybe lost or will not have the, I mean, merchandise planners are the owners of the skills that you need to replan and to find a solution in a complex scenario. Then, Also, I would say they have to be autonomous in terms of decision-making. This is also a managing, I think, a management focus that we have to have in mind. They have to be free. Merchandising planners have to feel free in a structured environment. Environment to take decisions and quickly. Because if we wait that I have free time to look at the plan of the enemy, we're dead. Okay, so they have to be able to take decision in an environment and processes that we define in terms of what is your decision space or perimeter. Of course, they have to be aware of regulatory changes like if they were working in a legal service. European context is a master in terms of complexity of the pricing laws. They have to start working. It is important to start to generate a sensibility in terms of what demand planning has to be in terms of an intelligence to put in their processes. In this case, with the technological revolution we're facing, they have to be aware of what is happening in their environment. In their environment, what is happening is that AI, machine learning, and so on are entering, are entering to stay and to invade with a volume of information that was not imaginable before. Sorry, I repeated this. 3 times that. It's because I'm very, very, very surprised of what is happening in our industry from a technology point of view. And then they have to be able to consider multiple scenarios. What I was saying, telling before is combine effects, changing in timings, changing in forex, changing in the demand. An important market that now is gone, like Russia. Well, lots of volatility that has to be managed in plants that reinvent themselves. So to do that, they have to be trained, and we have to— to consider that maybe Excel is not enough. Maybe Excel is not enough in terms of the speed, the volume of data we consider, the different scenarios. The accuracy as we go fast is key. And in Excel, when you go fast, we know what happens. Yes, they have to be trained on how this technology will revolutionarily change their way of work and their role in the organizations. Okay, so there are some points, some strategy and so on that have to be followed. But I would like to make a round of questions of what do you think we have to do as merchandise planners or merchandise planning managers or let's say, stakeholders in those functions to take all the advantage of this opportunity. Okay. Everyone fell asleep. Sorry. I will do it fast. Well, I think— There are 5 main good practices that are management practices, but we can drill it down to merchandise planning, right? There is, of course, training. I was saying we have to train people because, well, because technology is going fast and they have been trained on how it works and how they can use it and what can be the strategical use we're going to be making of it. And we have to listen to them because Because as we are manager, we delegate. So we are not in the day by day. So we have to train people who is in the day by day to come back with ideas and give us opportunities or their point of view because it is essential to take all the value of this technological transformation. Then we have to involve the teams. Involve the teams, why? It is because it happened to me when I was a junior merchandise planner or when I worked in other roles that they came to me, well, now this is your merchandise and assortment planning tool. Hasta luego. What happened? No one used it. No one listened to us when we had suggestion of improvement or even to simplify processes. And this has been introducing complete disasters that happened. And I think that a lot of disasters happened in the last years, in the last years, in the last, I mean, 10 years ago. And this made like a lot of merchandise planners to be, oh, I remember all Appcubes. I remember how long it was to remake a project, to put me, myself in a project of merchandise financial planning. I don't want it. Well, we have to involve people and to tell them, hey, the industry is changing. You should see those platforms, what they can do. Train them on how technologies can help them. Because as a merchandise planner myself, I didn't have any idea, and I still don't have an idea technically, but yes, practically of what the cloud, of what a lot of technologies made platforms to digitalize their process from Excel to a platform more performing, faster and precise than an Excel. It wasn't the case 10 years ago. Well, we have to empower people, no, to transmit them, okay, Once we have— permit me to walk a little bit. Once we have participated and defined altogether the blueprint or what is the skeleton of my organization and my processes and so on, I have digitalized it and so on. I think we have the opportunity, we had the opportunity, and if we execute it well, it is done, it would be done. To give people responsibility and ownership on their end-to-end process or the end-to-end process, let me say, of their parcel, of their responsibility area. And so we can transform merchandise planners instead of Excel producers and so on, on strategic stakeholders of their areas. They could budget. They could plan, they could execute, they could follow up in Caesar, for example. Then in terms of information, well, we have inform. We have to make information flow. A lot of organizations are organized by silos. And those silos, what they provoke is that double layers, people doing the same or people not talking and not doing something that needs to be done. So I mean, everything can happen. But if you had a platform or if you use technology in a good way, you could, I mean, at least paint what your end-to-end process is with some checkpoints, with some communication, communicate in this painted workflow. I think you could see the information in all the combinations and to all the people that needs to consume this information. And then you have to delegate. People has to take decision. And as merchandise planners, we have to— as merchandise planner, we have to take decision. And as managers, we have to let people take decisions. And through a good technology helping, monitor decision and make decision-making faster and make decisions taken fast at each time. So I would like to know if you have something to add, because I think this is really, really incomplete or really summarizing. It's summarizing a lot.

Yeah.

No, just scream. Yeah, no problem.

Push something? You? Yeah. For me, it's also— I do understand all the points, right? So, don't get me wrong. But if you would translate it in a day-to-day business, it's also how many planning cycles, for instance, do you have? So, if you have 4 planning cycles, you start all over again. So, you should also involve your team, for instance, saying, what would be an ideal time frame to work in. Because if you just tell them you have a new tool and they all know it takes forever to start that up, they always will use the old one because then they use the old one to prove what's in the new one, and then you have to double work again, right? Of course. That's for me really something they have to have a look on the time frames you, you're working in.

Yeah, totally, totally, the time frames. And I, I think it It is represented a little bit in the, in blueprinting what your business or your organization needs. I mean, to make a map, a complete map of what's your process, how many times is it to recur during a period of time and so on. Of course, it's key. Risk and rewards. We're almost at the end. 10 minutes. Okay. Then we can make some Q&A or a coffee. Risks and rewards. There is a risk if we adopt it and we not do— I think, and we do not examine deeply what our information needs are. The risk is to have too much information and to— to lose a little bit clearness, no? And too much information, from my point of view, is like no information. One of those risks, well, too much information can be provoked by working by silos, especially with technology teams, with IT teams. So I think that it is very important to collaborate and to foster this business acumen in the IT teams, but also this technological curiosity in merchandise planning teams. Even if they work since 10 years in the company and they are really valuable because they know a lot, we have to drive them to learn a lot more. And then the risk of working by silos, what it is, is that TI thinks that they have to give you a superpower or a super platform or super functions. If TI blueprints without talking with you what you need, the risk is to buy a Ferrari to go buy milk. It's completely useless. So it is important that business and TI functions collaborate. We have to foster this. We can choose the wrong solution, the wrong platform, the wrong technology to solve a problem or to cover a need. Or we can end at the end of things, we can, again, like 10 or 15 years ago, we can result in a misfunction or in not adopting the solution at the end, so in a complete disaster. So we have to be really, really clear in terms of we have to collaborate and to cross-train a lot. In terms of the evolving role of merchandise planners, well, I think I said enough to seed a little bit the suspect that merchandise planners are growing in terms of leadership in the organization. At least it's what happened in Mango. So Mango, before 2019, I saw the CEO twice a year to say how the collection sold, what we're going to be doing next year, and ciao. Now we are put in context with C-levels quickly. What will happen with the containers? What will happen with the timings? What will happen with the strikes in the USA? What will happen with— a lot of things. And they are relying on us like if we were consultants. So we have to— we really need to focus on not to lose the nature of what our role is. I mean, I'm very happy that merchandise planning is gaining weight and importance and so on. But another danger we have is to transform our fashion companies in data companies. And not working, not focusing on products. So we have to draw solutions that empower merchandise planning to help better, to help in the best way our design teams, product teams, and so on, that will also enjoy a lot or grow a lot because of this technological revolution that they are facing too in terms of generative AI image, and so on. And then there are the opportunities, a lot of opportunities, right? We can gain a lot of time, a lot of accuracy, we can generate more value. We can dedicate real time to what we are good at, which is strategy, sales, or detecting opportunity instead of doing Excel. And we can exponentially improve on details, or we can answer a lot more questions if we go faster and with good information and reliable. If we make and answer more questions, it's possible that we discover new opportunities or gold mines that we didn't discover before for the business. So I think it's a real— It's a real opportunity that we have to consider when we decide strategically how much we think our company should bet on this technological change that we are facing as fashion retailers or fashion industry in general. And then accuracy translates in more accuracy in terms of forecast, in terms of having good data, good prices, good pricing, everything. Translates itself in more margin, more money for the company. So why not? Then conclusions. I think 4 keywords are enough. So technology, we have to consider it as potential. I mean, not earned, but potential superpowers. For merchandise planners. I mean, their work done in 1 hour, and then they can dedicate 7 hours to value generation. Their work, their traditional work done in 1 hour. Then the position of merchandise planner that is bringing more value makes us thinking that maybe The next merchandise planners we will select in our teams will be different profiles from those that we selected 5 or 6 years ago. In terms of opportunities, infinity, infinity of opportunities. I see really clearly that quality time for merchandise planners is the main pain point we have to correct with technology in the next years. And then in terms of agility, well, we will be more agile in terms of reactivity to what happens in the world. And this is pretty much all. So if anyone has some questions, thought to share, I'm listening to you. One question.

You mentioned how it used to be where you'd work separately to the rest of the business, and now it sounds like you're much more integrated and having conversations more. What made that— what changed to make that happen?

Yeah, thank you. What changed? Well, to me, there are two eras. It is when a company used to work really slow with planning their season, executing it, and doing some follow-up in season, like deviation and promo, no promo, not much more. And then now, what happened, I think it is that other stakeholders that used to collaborate with merchandise planner and interact with merchandise planners as like, prepare the presentation, tell me what it will sell, and so on. They're now lost because they say, OK, what do you think? And who doesn't do this? I mean, we have all cases of, I mean, a buyer which is not comfortable with collaborating with a merchandise planner, right? Well, before, this was— Normally it was because of the business, because of the strategies in Cinesense and so on. Well, now maybe, maybe our CFO would call us at the second time that happens that the buyer took the decision alone, and they would call us and they would tell the buyer, why are we in the situation you put it, you're putting us into? This helps also this transformation of the role, right? In terms of we own a part of the answers to the questions that are done every day. Any question?

No?

Well, thank you very much, everybody.