JDA partners with Google on retail planning tool

JDA Software Group Inc. has partnered with Google Inc. to create a cloud-based assortment planning tool called Retail.me, aimed at retailers who are adapting their brick-and-mortar stores from static shelves to an omnichannel, mobile-driven shopping model.

Customers in the information age have come to expect interactive, visual, and responsive shopping experiences, adding new challenges for retailers who are already struggling to adapt to omnichannel operations, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based JDA says. To meet that challenge, JDA teamed up with the Internet search giant to build an application on its Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Bruce Bordelon, technical solutions director at Google, told attendees at the JDA Focus user group meeting in Nashville on Monday.

The result is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that runs on the GCP, allowing JDA to supply the code and while Google provides the core infrastructure, data analytics, and machine learning that power it, Bordelon said.

Retail.me is designed to make the user experience of in-store shopping more similar to online shopping, by enabling retail planners to align their product selection with customer preferences based on expected local demand, according to JDA.

JDA's platform predicts that demand by using data science to segment consumer groups based on their actual buying behavior, instead of generic demographics, JDA CEO Baljit Dail said.