Buyer's Toolbox AP vs. daVinci Retail

It is real experience and we will not pretend otherwise. Their founder ran global consulting at JDA Arthur and built the Arthur implementation methodology, and the team carries time at Oracle Retek and on the retail side at Footlocker, Walmart and Kinney Shoes. If you are buying Arthur-lineage merchandise planning done properly, that is a credible team. Weigh two things alongside it. Scope: Arthur was a planning and assortment product, and that is the shape of what daVinci built — the buy. Duration: we have shipped the same product family since 1992, the same owners and the same people throughout, and every release has gone into retail merchandise planning.

Focus is real, and you should hear that from us rather than discover it later. If the buy is genuinely the whole problem, daVinci belongs on your shortlist and Canvas Buying is a good-looking replacement for the buy sheet. The question to put to both vendors is week six of the season. The buy is placed, half of it landed early, one category is running 20% over plan and two are dead, and the stores that need the goods are not the ones that got them. What does the system do then? Ours reallocates, replenishes, reforecasts the plan, and puts the most expensive problem at the top of a planner's list. Ask daVinci to walk you through the same week.

They do, and they say so. The difference is ranking. Most exception tools tell you what broke — four hundred alerts, all technically true, sorted by nothing in particular, and a planner who stops opening the email by week three. Exception Intelligence sorts by dollar impact, so the list starts with the most expensive problem and works down. Do not take our word for it: ask both vendors to demonstrate prioritization, not detection. Load a real week of exceptions and ask which one to fix first, and why.

Yes. They plan margin goals by wholesale channel alongside stores and ecommerce, and they state it plainly. Wholesale breaks down in the specifics, though, not in the plan. Ask for a demo of a cancellation: a retailer drops 40% of a style three weeks before ship, and you need the reserved stock released, availability-to-promise recalculated, the backorder position updated and the open-to-buy restated — without a spreadsheet in the middle. That is the workflow Buyer's Toolbox runs at item level. Ask to see theirs.

Three tests, given to both. First, a working system built on your own data before any contract — insist your planners can use it, not just watch a demo. Second, a three-year total cost covering licence, implementation, seats and support. Third, the one most buyers skip: a scripted change request. Ask each vendor to price and schedule the same three changes twelve months after go-live. Add a hierarchy level. Add a custom KPI. Restate a formula.