Just Style Excellence Awards 2024: Centric Software

Centric Software has won in the 2024 Just Style Excellence Awards in four categories namely Innovation, Research and Development, M&A, and Product Launches.

While Centric Software’s R&D excellence is showcased through its development of intelligent, robust tools that provide detailed insights for informed decision-making, its innovation in artificial intelligence (AI) has been continuing since 2018 when it embedded AI into its Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution for image search.

The company’s flagship and best-of-breed solution, Centric PLM™, particularly stands out in the market as the only Product Lifecycle Management solution capable of managing multi brands, multi categories and multi processes for consumer goods brands, retailers and manufacturers of any size. The solution brings cost savings, reduces time to market, and improves efficiencies for thousands of companies around the world.

Centric Planning™ solution, enhanced with new market-driven innovations in 2023, stood out in the Product Launches category, while a strategic acquisition resulted in a cutting-edge pricing and inventory solution.

Innovation-driven R&D leading to significant evolution

Centric Software’s focus on creating a seamless, concept-to-customer product solution experience has led to significant product evolution.

The Centric Planning™ tool epitomises the company’s dedication to creating a seamless, concept-to-customer product solution experience. Designed to improve assortment planning, visual reporting, and team collaboration, the tool has seen 100% user adoption rate since its launch in 2018, reflecting its effectiveness in boosting margins, optimising inventory management, and fostering team collaboration.

The highly configurable and modular nature of Centric Planning™ enables an integrated approach to merchandise financial planning, assortment, allocation, replenishment, and demand planning within a unified solution environment. This strategic, end-to-end approach is vital for brands and retailers managing extensive stock keeping units (SKUs), ensuring they maintain a competitive edge.

Customer-centric enhancements and market validation

Centric Software’s partnership approach with customers has led to the development of approximately 100 new features for Centric Planning™ over the past year, showcasing the company’s agility and commitment to delivering future-ready solutions. Further leveraging AI for planning and demand forecasting, Centric Planning™ increases sell-through rates, maximises profitability, and optimises the omnichannel experience to mitigate overproduction risks.

The positive market response and adoption by leading retailers globally, with significant returns on investment, validate the effectiveness of Centric’s R&D and product launch strategies.

Leading retailers globally adopted the solution and reported significant returns on investment, including a 200+% increase in operating margins and a 75% reduction in planning cycles.

Industry giants such as Guess and Triumph have lauded the solution for its impact on operational efficiency, market agility, and user satisfaction.

Strategic M&A: Integrating aifora for enhanced AI-driven pricing and inventory optimisation

The consumer goods industry faces the challenges of rapidly changing consumer demands and market conditions, where the ability to adapt through data-driven strategies is becoming increasingly critical for competitiveness and profitability. Centric’s acquisition of aifora, an AI-driven pricing and inventory optimisation platform based in Germany, was a strategic decision in such a market environment.

Post-acquisition, aifora was integrated into Centric’s suite as the Centric Pricing & Inventory Solution, promising a substantial increase in revenues (6-18%) and margins (4-15%), while reducing discounting by as much as 60%. Furthermore, the solution supports sustainability initiatives by optimising supply chains to reduce overstock and stockouts.

The success stories of aifora’s clients, such as the German fashion brand Wöhrl, further validate the acquisition. Since adopting aifora’s solutions, Wöhrl has been able to more accurately predict consumer demand, produce optimal inventory levels, and price competitively, thereby improving sell-through rates at full price.

AI-focused innovations

Centric Software’s consistent dedication to innovation is evident in its ongoing enhancement of product functionality, guided by the Centric Advisory Board (CAB), which includes brands and retailers from all over the world. The company’s focus on AI-driven products, such as Centric PLM™ and Centric Planning™, is reinforced by its strategic acquisitions, including StyleSage – now Centric Market Intelligence™ in 2022 and aifora – now Centric Pricing & Inventory™ in 2023.

All of Centric’s acquisitions have been driven by either AI or machine learning, highlighting the company’s commitment to bolstering AI capabilities within its product suite, ensuring continuous innovation and added value for customers.

Centric Software’s impressive haul at the 2024 Just Style Excellence Awards is a testament to its leadership in innovation, R&D, M&A, and product launches. The company’s forward-thinking approach and customer-centric solutions continue to set industry benchmarks, driving transformation and success for consumer goods brands, retailers, and manufacturers such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, home, and multi-category retail.

Company Profile

From its headquarters in Silicon Valley, Centric Software provides a concept-to-customer solution experience for consumer goods such as fashion, outdoor, luxury, multi-category retail, grocery, food & beverage, cosmetics & personal care, and consumer electronics to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products.

Centric Software’s flagship solution Centric PLM™ brings cost savings and efficiency by optimising product execution from ideation to development, sourcing and manufacture. Centric Planning™ is an innovative, cloud-native, augmented-intelligence solution delivering end-to-end planning capabilities to maximise retail and wholesale business performance. Centric Pricing & Inventory™ leverages AI to drive margin and revenue improvement by influencing demand via price and inventory optimisation from pre-season to in-season to season completion. Centric Market Intelligence is an AI-driven, market insight platform for data-informed decision-making on competitor offers and pricing as well as consumer trends and buying behaviour. Centric Visual Boards™ pivot actionable data in a visual-first orientation to ensure robust, consumer-right assortments and product offers.

Centric Software has the highest user adoption rate, customer satisfaction rate, and fastest time to value in the industry. Centric Software has received multiple industry awards and recognition and appears regularly in world-leading analyst reports and research.

Centric Software is a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes (Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), the world leader in 3D design software, 3D digital mock-up and PLM solutions.

Centric Software is a registered trademark of Centric Software, Inc. in the US and other countries. Centric PLM, Centric Planning, Centric Pricing & Inventory, Centric Market Intelligence, and Centric Visual Boards are Trademarks of Centric Software, Inc. All third-party trademarks are trademarks of their respective owners.