Bravo Lucy is a Norwegian supply chain analytics company and the sister company of Molde Analytics (www.moldeanalytics.com), our development center based in Hyderabad, India. Bravo Lucy brings to the market state of the art processes and software solutions for efficient analysis supporting decisions ranging from operational to strategic levels. Our unique identifier is our focus on new products where no historic data is available; this makes us stand out from most of the competition where the focus is to make predictions based on the past. Bravo Lucy is based in Norway, but has strong connections to both the academic environment around our founder, Professor Nils Rudi, as well as the sister company in India.
New products are great. This is how firms innovate, renew themselves, gain market share in existing product categories and expand into new product categories. And by being ahead of this innovation, market shares can be increased and one can command a premium in the form of larger margins.
Software for Supply Chain & Retail Analytics are traditionally for stable products. This means that the products have been in the market for a while and sufficient data is obtained to facilitate analysis and make decisions on future quantities.
Traditionally, many companies have no system support for their quantity decisions on new products, and the typical purchase meeting starts without any other input than an analysis of what happened last year or last season, and the expertise of the participants.
We strongly believe (and have proven) that it is possible to make more qualified decisions by improving this process and introducing tools to support this new process. Our offering is not one software system; it is 25% a central system, 25% apps for mobile phones and 50% about the process.
The science of BIG data has gained much popularity. With massive collection of data and powerful computing resources, one can find relationships that are virtually impossible for humans to identify. Forecasting new products is on the opposite side. This is the science of NO data. Since the product is not yet released, we do not have sales data – we don’t know how the market will respond to it.
Planning for new products is not mainly about improving efficiency and shaving off cost here and there – as the primary focus for stable products is. The key driver for planning new products is managing demand and risk. In general, quantities of new products will be wrong – either too much, resulting in markdowns to clear inventory, or too little, resulting in stock-outs and lost sales. To do this well, you need to be a gambler – similar to professional sports gamblers who use risk to their favor and gain a competitive edge over their peers.
The basis for the solution is the “Wisdom of crowds”. But – that is not enough. We have developed a process with supporting software and apps.
An app that collects input
from users in a fun way.
App that supports the picture
taking and joining photos with
barcodes and product information.
The heart of the solution –
this is where all the input is
crunched into a solid foundation
for quantity decision.