News

JDA, InContext partner on retail management platform

January 29, 2019

JDA Software and InContext Solutions are partnering to bring together their respective technology for a virtual reality-based visualization and category management platform.

The technology, according to a press release, will let retailers virtually walk through the store, changing planograms and assortments on the fly.

"Brick-and-mortar is here to stay, but the role it will play in a shopper's path-to-purchase will vary," said Mark Hardy, CEO of InContext Solutions, in the release. "From showrooming and entertainment, to discovery and convenience, retailers and products will have to continuously rethink how to keep shoppers engaged in a unified commerce world. To do this, technology and data that enables faster decisions will be needed to help evolve Category Management from an annual or semi-annual event to a perpetual management process."

The companies will link the JDA Category Knowledge Base, from the JDA Category Management portfolio, with InContext's ShopperMX VR SaaS platform to allow immersive collaboration, visualization and testing of category strategies.

Down the road the partners will enable more agile design, analytics and deployment of total store shopper experiences for brick-and-mortar retailers, further optimizing the supply chain and store operations.

"The ability to not only test and explore new in-store retail concepts but also make planogram and assortment changes on the fly using virtual reality is a huge opportunity for retailers to take the customer experience to the next level," said Jim Prewitt, group vice president, product management, JDA, in the release. "Partnering with InContext will enable us to embed their ShopperMX platform into our market-leading category management solutions to empower in-store retailers with delivering the best product mix for their shoppers in real-time."