Introduction to Automatic Replacements

The actuality of created planograms, for example in case of seasonal goods that can no longer be reordered because there will be a different model of such products next year, is a very common problem and concern when starting with planograms. This is what the automatic product replacement functionality on planograms can help with as it includes automatic republishing of the planogram with the new product.

Perhaps the most notorious example of such situations is the clothing market, where it usually means that different goods are offered every season. If a product is sold out in one store, cannot be reordered and there is no stock in the central warehouse, it is necessary to place a new product on the planogram. With a large number of stores, this is very difficult to manage as each store will fully sell out the product at a different time. This is why we have implemented an automatic placement module in Quant, where you can use fully automatic substitutions based on exact or more open matching of product attributes or a substitution mode for only certain products with defined substitutions. 

When setting up automatic replacements, you must go through the following steps to control which stores, categories and products will be replaced:

1. Settings at stores

You need to set whether Quant should automatically generate replacements for each store or not.

2. Settings at categories

The settings on the categories allow you to set whether Quant should automatically generate reacements for those categories, as well as several other attributes that allow you to define exactly how the replacements should work.

3. Setting up categories at stores

You can also set up automatic replacements at a more detailed level, for a category-store combination, if for some reason you don't want to use replacements everywhere. This setting takes precedence over the store or category settings.

4. Settings on products

Settings on products are necessary if you want to replace products only with a defined replacement or products from one group of replacements. If you are happy with the settings on categories, you can skip this step.

5. Setting up the Automatic Replacements task

Setting up an automatic task is the final step in which you define on which day and at which time Quant should perform the automatic replacements.

6. Criteria evaluation

Automatic replacements are evaluated based on a number of attributes.

7. Display automatic replacements on the Quant Dashboard

You can add the Automatic Replacements in Planograms widget to your dashboard to see all the replacements you've made.

If you don't want replacements to be selected automatically by Quant, but want to choose your own replacements by an import, you can use the automatic task REST API Product Replacements Import.