Furniture · Assortment · Epicor · VP Supply Chain

Furniture assortment from Epicor, briefed to supply chain

You find out about stockouts after customers do. Ward flags furniture assortment movement in your Epicor data early, with root cause and a recommended move attached.

The full picture: furniture assortment, Epicor data, Supply Chain decisions

What assortment planning does: Ward analyzes sell-through by store cluster to recommend which SKUs to add, drop, or reallocate.

Furniture Manufacturing & Retail changes the scale of the problem: 10,000+ SKUs, every one of your locations. ERP-locked production data, long lead times, and margin erosion you don't see until quarter-end. Ward connects your internal systems and surfaces what matters.

You find out about stockouts after customers do. Ward pulls forward the readings that change a supply chain decision.

How it runs. Ward clusters stores by demographic, traffic, and sales patterns, then measures SKU performance against cluster benchmarks.

The connection itself. Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse.

The short list

  • Planogram optimization inputs
  • Store cluster segmentation
  • SKU rationalization recommendations
  • Whitespace opportunity detection
app.getward.ai Live demo
Acme Furniture @Finance: Margin Analyst claude-sonnet default
A

Chat

Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.

Why is upholstery margin down four points this quarter?
You · 9:42 AM
Schema Scout · routed to Margin Agent

I pulled upholstery cost of goods by BOM line against the last price file. Three quarters of the drop is material and freight, not discounting.

SignalFinding
bom_cost_actualsFoam and frame stock +9.2% since the March price file, never carried to list
freight.inboundInbound container cost +$412 per unit-equivalent on the Vietnam lane
channel.mixWholesale share up 6pp, and wholesale runs 11pp under DTC margin

Recommend: reprice the six affected SKUs at the next list cycle, quote the alternate foam vendor, and hold wholesale allocation flat until list catches up.

11 parallel queries 4 sources cited confidence 0.90
Show me the SKU-level margin waterfall.
You · 9:43 AM
Margin Agent · building waterfall
Querying bom_cost_actuals
Ask anything, Ward routes to the right agent. Cmd+K

Reporting

Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries. Every number re-derivable from its SQL.

7d13w52w
Revenue vs. forecast
$19.8M
+1.8% WoW
Gross margin, upholstery
42.1%
−4.1pp
Order-to-delivery, custom
14.2 wks
+1.9 wks
Aged inventory, 180+ days
$6.4M
+$1.2M
Revenue vs. forecast 13 weeks actual, 6 weeks forecast, 80% interval
Actual Forecast 80% interval
% of plan 106 94 100 forecast → W−13 W−5 today +6wk
Holt-Winters + weather regressor MAPE 4.1% at 4wk Backtested 24 months Crosses plan in 3 weeks
Forecast error by horizon MAPE, 24-month backtest
1wk 2.1%
2wk 3.0%
4wk 4.1%
8wk 6.3%
13wk 8.9%
Accuracy bar for promo decisions: ≤5% at 4wk
Models in production Every forecast ships a model card
ModelHorizonMAPE
holt_winters4wk4.1%
arima_sarimax13wk8.9%
gbm_demand1wk2.1%
bayes_hiernew store11.4%

Sources

Connect external systems to the data lake.

NameTypeLast sync
epicor_production_stage_logimport2m ago
epicor_bom_cost_actualsimport2m ago
sap_inventory_snapshotimport14m ago
netsuite_sales_ordersimport1h ago
retail_showroom_posimport1h ago
retail_freight_inboundimport1h ago
retail_dealer_ordersimport1h ago

Policies

Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.

TLS 1.3 AES-256 Read-only SOC 2 II
Policy IDEffectResources
finance-read-defaultpermitModel::*
sourcing-read-bompermitModel::"bom_cost_actuals"
dealer-blockedforbidModel::"bom_*"
plant-read-productionpermitModel::"production_stage_log"
Assortment for Furniture on Epicor data, live product demo.

Why Assortment matters for Furniture retail

Showroom floor space is the most expensive shelf in retail, and every piece on it competes for placement against the online-only long tail. Ward measures sell-through and margin per square foot of floor by showroom cluster, so you can decide which pieces earn a physical slot, which move to web-only, and where a gap in the assortment is costing you the sale.

What Ward has eyes on.

Stock what sells. Cut what doesn't. Ward runs the model continuously rather than on a reporting cycle, which is why a finding lands the morning the pattern starts instead of at the end of the period.

Coverage is store by store, category by category. Ward scans continuously inventory carrying cost, order-to-delivery cycle, gross margin by channel over 10,000+ SKUs and compares each store against its own baseline, not against the chain. That is the difference between knowing the estate is fine and knowing which seven locations are not.

Ward pulls from Epicor rather than replacing it. Sales orders, inventory, purchase orders come across on a read-only connection, get enriched with contextual data, and come back as cards. Your ERP is untouched.

At the metric level. Ward measures sell-through, margin, and revenue per floor square foot by SKU and showroom cluster, scores online-versus-showroom fit per piece, and flags whitespace where demand exists but no product is placed. Floor space is finite and costly, so the unit of analysis is productivity per slot, not raw units sold.

Signals · POS by SKU and store, showroom floor plans and square footage, e-commerce sell-through, traffic counts, demographic overlays, and margin by piece.

Why this combination
is its own problem.

Assortment Planning produces a lot of output that is technically correct and operationally useless to supply chain. Ward filters on whether the finding changes a decision a VP Supply Chain can actually make.

  • 01 One national floor plan ignores that urban and suburban clusters buy completely different styles, so every store carries someone else's slow movers.
  • 02 Hero pieces are kept on the floor out of habit long after their velocity has faded, crowding out the groupings that would turn faster.

Benchmarks. Furniture floor productivity varies widely: top-quartile showrooms generate several times the revenue per square foot of the bottom quartile on the same footprint. Rationalizing the slowest 15 to 20% of floor SKUs into web-only and backfilling with cluster-matched groupings commonly lifts floor revenue 5 to 12%.

What the first 90 days
actually look like.

  1. 01

    Week 1: connect

    Read-only credentials to Epicor. Ward ingests sales orders, inventory, purchase orders and starts building baselines. First findings land inside 48 hours, before baselines are stable, so you can see the shape of the output early.

  2. 02

    Weeks 2 to 3: baselines

    Ward needs roughly two weeks of history per store to separate a real deviation from normal variance. During this window the findings are directionally right and the thresholds are still moving.

  3. 03

    Weeks 4 to 12: operating rhythm

    Findings arrive on a daily cycle and get triaged like any other queue. Most teams find the volume settles into something one person clears in ten minutes. What matters is the action rate, not the alert count.

How Ward connects to Epicor

Ward integrates with Epicor for home improvement, furniture, and building supply retailers. Inventory, purchasing, production, and sales data power insight cards.

Setup: Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse.

Data Ward reads from Epicor

Sales orders
Inventory
Purchase orders
Customer accounts
Pricing tiers
Vendor performance

Impact metrics with Epicor

Seasonal Accuracy
Pre-buy timing sharpened
Weather and event signals calibrate seasonal positioning.
Project Basket Value
Cross-sell patterns found
Project purchasing sequences reveal attachment opportunities.
Vendor Fill Rate
Degradation caught early
Fill rate drops flagged before shelf impact materializes.
Inventory Carrying Cost
Slow-movers identified
Demand-aligned ordering frees capital tied in dead stock.

Data lake enrichment

Ward enriches Epicor data with: Sales orders, Weather & events, Contractor/Pro data, Competitor pricing, Vendor scorecards

You find out about stockouts after customers do.

Pain points
  • ×Demand forecasts are off by 15-25% and nobody catches it until the shelf is empty
  • ×Supplier fill rate problems announce themselves at the receiving dock
  • ×Safety stock levels get set once a year and left alone
  • ×No early warning system for supply chain disruptions
  • ×Replenishment exceptions require manual triage every morning
How Ward helps
  • Stockout prediction cards arrive 24-72 hours before empty shelves
  • Supplier fill rate tracking with automatic escalation
  • Dynamic safety stock recommendations based on current demand signals
  • Weather, event, and macro-driven demand adjustments
  • Replenishment exceptions auto-prioritized by revenue impact

Stockouts cost retailers $1.14 trillion in missed sales globally each year. Source: IHL Group

Furniture KPI impact

Inventory Carrying Cost
Aged stock flagged
Slow-moving SKUs identified before carrying costs compound.
Order-to-Delivery Cycle
Bottleneck visibility
Cycle time tracked by production stage against baselines.
Gross Margin
Real-time by channel
Material cost drift detected the week it starts.
Stockout Frequency
Advance warning
POS and e-commerce signals feed back into production.

Frequently asked questions

Ward analyzes sell-through by store cluster to recommend which SKUs to add, drop, or reallocate. For Furniture retail specifically, Ward monitors 10,000+ SKUs across your locations and delivers automated insight cards with root cause analysis and recommended actions.

Ward tracks Inventory carrying cost, Order-to-delivery cycle, Gross margin by channel, Raw material cost variance, Custom order cycle time at the store-category level. Ward clusters stores by demographic, traffic, and sales patterns, then measures SKU performance against cluster benchmarks.

Ward connects via Epicor REST API. Compatible with Epicor Prophet 21 and Epicor Eclipse. Data points include: Sales orders, Inventory, Purchase orders, Customer accounts, Pricing tiers, Vendor performance.

Yes. Ward reads Epicor data and combines it with contextual signals (weather, events, demographics) to generate Furniture-specific insight cards. No custom development required.

You find out about stockouts after customers do. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: Stockout prediction cards arrive 24-72 hours before empty shelves. Supplier fill rate tracking with automatic escalation. Dynamic safety stock recommendations based on current demand signals.

Ward delivers daily insight cards covering Inventory carrying cost, Order-to-delivery cycle, Gross margin by channel, tailored for Supply Chain decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.

Ward measures sell-through, margin, and revenue per floor square foot by SKU and showroom cluster, scores online-versus-showroom fit per piece, and flags whitespace where demand exists but no product is placed. Floor space is finite and costly, so the unit of analysis is productivity per slot, not raw units sold.

A regional chain runs the same floor plan across every showroom. Ward clusters showrooms by demographic and traffic and shows that urban locations turn contemporary upholstery far faster than the traditional case goods taking up a third of their floor, while suburban stores show the reverse. Ward recommends a cluster-specific floor: move slow case goods to web-only in urban stores and add two contemporary groupings. Floor productivity per square foot rises without adding space.

First insight cards arrive within 48 hours of data connection. Ward needs approximately 2 weeks to establish stable baselines for your specific operation.

No. Ward sits on top of your existing stack. It is the proactive intelligence layer that watches your data continuously and delivers insight cards, so your team acts on findings instead of hunting for them.

See what Furniture assortment problems Ward catches.

Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.

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Find out what your data has been hiding.

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