Description/Paper Instructions
Please click on the word document to see the specific requirements of the assignment.
Before you start, please watch the video first, which has some tips on how to allocate. Also, please fill in the “number to allocate” column in Excel with the number of products you want to assign to a particular store, and then write your reasons for doing so on the word document as requested. This assignment won’t require external research unless you feel it’s necessary and make sure the resources are within the latest 2 years, no more than 2 resources. and this assignment will be submitted to the Turnitin, pleases cite carefully
If you think 3 pages will make the content more complete and more consistent, please contact me ***
Finally, please send me both the excel sheet and word document you have written. Thank you
Before you start, please watch the video first, which has some tips on how to allocate. Also, please fill in the “number to allocate” column in Excel with the number of products you want to assign to a particular store, and then write your reasons for doing so on the word document as requested. This assignment won’t require external research unless you feel it’s necessary and make sure the resources are within latest 2 years and no more than 2 resources. and this assignment will be submitted to the Turnitin, pleases cite carefully)
If you think 3 pages will make the content more complete and more consistent, please contact me. I’ll request an extra page through system and pay for that. Finally, please send me both the excel sheet and word document you have written
ASSIGNMENT 3: ALLOCATION CASE
“I GOT BLUE, BABE”
Imagine that you are an allocator of towels. Your buyer has just been given last-minute money to spend and came across a great deal from a vendor closing out old inventory – 5,000 towels at only $2 cost per unit (the towels usually retail for $19.99 at a cost of $12 per unit, so the gross margin on these towels is quite high)! In addition to using the typical metrics to allocate these units. Your buyer has just informed you that this buy needs to be allocated ASAP. Although you are working on a limited time frame, you do have a handful of metrics from which to work (see attached spreadsheet for numbers).
There’s only one catch – the towels are incredibly, incredibly blue. Cornea-burning cobalt, in fact. You currently have this particular color on the floor at 100 stores, but in order to spread out the inventory, your buyer wants to see these units allocated to the remaining 100 stores in your chain. Thus, you will be allocating to a total of up to 200 stores, but you may disagree with the buyer and decide not to send units to the remaining 100 stores. Provide justification if you do not think that any should be sent to a certain store.
You must meet the following conditions. Any store that does not currently have the color in stock must receive no fewer than 6 units to meet minimum acceptable presentation quantities. Since this is a replenishment order, there is no maximum limit on how many units can be allocated to one store.
Additionally, here are some helpful tidbits of information:
- Historically, stores in Florida and California have sold cobalt blue bath products quite well. California is typically more profitable than Florida due to general willingness to pay of consumers. owHowever, this may not be the case for this particular item, so review the data to see if it is.
- High performing stores should, of course, receive a good deal of replenishment, but keep in mind the ratio of units you are allocating to any one store relative to sales history and current inventory. For example, 100 units is not a lot for a store that has sold 300 units over four weeks and only has about 20 left on hand, but 30 units would be a lot to give a store that has not sold any units.
- These towels have been on the sales floor for 12 weeks at this point. Anything that has not sold at the end of 12 more weeks will be marked down. Keep this in mind as you make your allocations, because profitable inventory productivity is part of your performance evaluation!
ASSIGNMENT
Your job is to allocate this buy using logical decisions. In addition to the above few points, also search through the data and identify at least one additional trend. For example, are certain locations more profitable than others, and can you tell why? List and briefly discuss this trend. PivotTables may help in identifying such a trend.
Next, use the column provided in the spreadsheet to allocate this buy, taking into consideration all of the information above as well as the productivity information in the spreadsheet. Consider sales of this particular item (for stores that have already had it), current inventory on hand, profitability information, etc. After you have allocated the buy, write a paragraph describing how you allocated the buy. Include specifics of how you addressed the information in the overview as well as the spreadsheet. For example, did you give more than average to California and Florida since this was called out above, or did you feel that that inventory would be better used elsewhere?
Keep in mind that THERE ARE NO WRONG ANSWERS AS LONG AS YOU CAN DEFEND YOUR DECISIONS USING NUMBERS AND WELL-REASONED LOGIC!