Centric Software unveils retail AI upgrades for global markets: live competitor benchmarking, China-ready replenishment and precise pre-season buys

Centric Software adds AI upgrades to retail planning: forecasting, assortment intelligence and China-specific replenishment

Centric Software announced a new wave of AI-driven capabilities for Centric Planning that plug directly into product and go-to-market workflows. For product development teams, the promise is simple: tighter planning signals, clearer market context and faster cross-functional decisions.

The updates connect planning with Centric PLM and Centric Visual Boards, giving merch, design, sourcing and planning a shared view of demand, pricing and assortment performance.

What's new and why it matters to Product Development

• Competitive benchmarking inside planning: AI compares similar products, prices and availability using live data from Centric Market Intelligence. Result: fewer blind spots in line planning, better option counts by price band and quicker response to shifts in the market.
• Strategic replenishment for China: A region-specific algorithm reflects local production cycles and logistics, improving store-level accuracy and time-to-shelf for China operations. Useful for global brands building country-specific playbooks without spinning up separate tools.
• AI-based pre-season buy quantification: Attribute-enriched forecasting (trained on billions of products via Centric Market Intelligence) recommends buy quantities at the assortment planning stage. That reduces stock imbalance, overproduction and premature markdowns.

Impact reported by Centric Software

• Up to 110% improvement in margins with end-to-end planning and SKU optimization
• Operating margins doubled and planning cycle times cut by 75%
• Inventory reduced by 50% and budget preparation time cut by half

How product teams can put this to work

• Link PLM milestones to demand signals: Tie concept lock, proto approval and line adoption to the latest forecast ranges so you size buys and materials with evidence, not guesswork.
• Design to price and mix: Use benchmarking to spot price gaps and duplicate options. Adjust feature sets, trims and packs to hit target price points without cannibalization.
• Pre-season gates with quantity guidance: Require AI quantity recommendations before committing POs. Review confidence intervals, attributes and historical comps in one view.
• Regional differentiation: For China, apply the new replenishment logic to test-and-repeat models. Feed sell-through and lead-time feedback loops into PLM change requests.
• Attribute discipline: Keep attributes clean and complete. Forecast accuracy depends on consistent color/fit/fabric/category tags across PLM and planning.
• Visual alignment: Use Centric Visual Boards to align merch, design and sourcing on option counts, price ladders and flow timing before handoff to production.

Deeper integrations across the stack

Centric Planning now pulls and pushes more context to Centric PLM and Centric Visual Boards. This reduces spreadsheet drift, brings market data into seasonal reviews and speeds up approval cycles. For teams working across categories (fashion, footwear, home, beauty, electronics and multi-category retail), a single platform lowers handoff friction.

Quote

"The latest innovations including AI/ML capabilities in Centric Planning enables brands and retailers to visualize analytics and data more effectively for more accurate demand forecasts throughout the product sales cycle," said Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. "These innovations reflect Centric Software's core strengths and market relevance via actionable AI and a connected ecosystem driving smarter, faster decisions for brands globally to boost revenues."

Where this fits in Centric's product suite

• Centric PLM: Optimizes product execution from ideation to manufacture, with reported gains of up to 50% in productivity and a 60% decrease in time to market.
• Centric Planning: Cloud-native, AI-driven planning across retail and wholesale, including SKU optimization and margin improvement.
• Centric Pricing & Inventory: AI price and inventory optimization from pre-season through season completion.
• Centric Market Intelligence: Consumer trends, competitor offers and pricing insights that feed planning and assortment decisions.
• Centric Visual Boards: Visual-first views of assortments and KPIs to streamline seasonal build and review.
• Centric PXM: Product experience management for PIM, DAM, content syndication and digital shelf analytics.

Action checklist for the next 90 days

• Run a pilot: one category, one region, one season-compare AI quantity guidance vs. business-as-usual.
• Define shared attributes across PLM and Planning; retire duplicate fields and align naming conventions.
• Stand up competitor benchmarking for your top 20% volume drivers and review price ladders monthly.
• Create a China replenishment playbook with target lead times, MOQ guardrails and decision thresholds.
• Set decision gates in Visual Boards: line close, pricing lock, buy readiness with evidence attached.

Learn more about Centric Software's platform and planning capabilities at centricsoftware.com.

If your product teams need practical upskilling on AI planning and analytics, explore role-based programs at Complete AI Training.