Growing multichannel retailer White Stuff is to improve its planning and merchandising activity with the introduction of a system from Island Pacific.

Due to go live by December, the application will replace an inefficient Excel-based system with software for merchandise, store and assortment planning. It will be used across store, web, mail order and wholesale channels and will provide a single view of the business.

The 60-store retailer is opening on average one store a month and has decided its existing system and processes are no longer suitable to support a growing business. The merchandising team presently spends a considerable amount of time manually updating spreadsheets to decide stock allocations.

White Stuff head of IT Venn Luscombe-Mahoney said the system is the missing link in the retailer’s applications suite.

He said its implementation will lead to more informed decision making. “We will be able to bring in all our historic data from day one and do trend analysis. So planning will be based on solid facts.”

He added: “We will be cleverer in how we manage markdowns and terminal stock. We will be able to go down to the SKU level of detail.”