The Retail Decisioning Buyer's Guide
A vendor-evaluation framework for retail decisioning software — six capability areas, a weighted scorecard, an 18-question RFP bank and a 90-day pilot design.
Buyer's guide · PDF · 13 pages
What's inside
A structured way to choose a retail decisioning platform — so the decision rests on what the system does to your operation, not on the polish of the demo.
- Build vs buy — the real cost of in-house decisioning (connectors, reconciliation, rule maintenance, write-back), and when each path makes sense.
- Six capability areas — data & integration, decisioning & explainability, orchestration & write-back, adoption & autonomy, security & governance, and time-to-value.
- A weighted scorecard — score every vendor 1–5 against the same definitions, with a written rationale that survives a steering committee.
- An 18-question RFP bank — questions written so a slide can't answer them, plus red flags to watch and a 90-day pilot design that proves one decision end to end.
Who it's for
VPs of Supply Chain and Demand Planning evaluating decisioning or demand-planning tools — and the analytics and procurement leaders who run the RFP with them.
Why it matters
Most decisioning evaluations are won by the best demo, not the best fit. This guide forces a like-for-like comparison on the capabilities that actually move sell-through, margin and working capital. It turns "write-back is on the roadmap" from a footnote into a deal-breaker before you sign.
More resources
The CFO's Business Case for Retail Decision Intelligence
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The Markdown & Clearance Field Guide
When to mark down, how deep, and where — a working method to recover margin and clear clean by treating markdown as a read-driven decision, not a calendar event.
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