The Perfume Shop is preparing to implement the second phase of a planning system from Island Pacific.

The first phase, for planning its weekly stock sales and intake, went live in November last year. The second phase, to provide line planning, will be live by June.

The Perfume Shop systems manager Alistair Cossins explained that the first phase went live quickly so that users could reap the benefits of having it running during the peak Christmas period.

The second phase will introduce functionality that the company has wanted for a long time and will replace manual processes. The retailer was using Island Pacific software already and Cossins said that the vendor has provided an “exceptional service level”.

Information is fed into the planning system directly from the retailer’s data warehouse, which saves a considerable amount of time. Cossins explained: “We were keen to develop an integrated and automated solution, which would create significant time and cost savings for the business. This system has saved us somewhere in the region of two days per week.”

The system has been configured from the ground up, around the retailer’s merchandising hierarchy, so that the relevant merchandising and buying staff are able to view the same information in different ways.