What Merchandising Teams Really Need From Modern Merchandising Tools

By Anne A. Wong, Chief Revenue Officer at Trasix

I recently sat down with Eline L, a merchandising leader I’ve known and respected for many years.

She has worked across global brands and regional teams, managing complex European markets and balancing the realities of strategy, execution, and coordination across multiple stakeholders. Her perspective is both strategic and practical. She understands what merchandising leaders are responsible for, and she understands how the work actually gets done day to day.

During our conversation, she walked us through how she builds a seasonal assortment.

What stood out most was the clarity of her thinking about merchandising tools and how teams use them.

For her, the central requirement is simple: merchandising leaders need a clear view of the assortment.

The Real Merchandising Problem Is Visibility

Merchandising leaders make decisions by evaluating the line across multiple dimensions at once.

They need to see categories, styles, delivery windows, price architecture, and seasonal comparisons together. They need to understand what has carried over from previous seasons and what new products are entering the assortment.

They also need visibility into the global line and how it translates into regional assortments.

As she explained during the conversation:

“All the comparisons, all your analysis are not Excel-based. That’s the major issue.”

Questions like these come up constantly during the merchandising process:

• What products are carrying over from last season?

• How does this assortment compare with the previous one?

• What is available from the global line for regional adoption?

• Are we aligned with option counts and SKU targets?

• What deliveries are launching and when?

These are standard merchandising decisions.

Yet in many organizations, answering them still requires exporting data and reconstructing the analysis in spreadsheets.

Why Merchandising Teams Still Depend on Excel

Even in organizations with PLM systems and assortment planning tools, merchandising teams often rely heavily on spreadsheets.

The reason is straightforward. Spreadsheets allow teams to build the comparisons, pivots, and summaries they need in order to evaluate the assortment.

She described the daily reality clearly:

“You can export, but then you need to do it ten times every day… for everything you do.”

Merchandising leaders move constantly between summary views and product-level detail. They review assortments by category, region, delivery window, and price architecture. They analyze carryovers from prior seasons and identify gaps in the upcoming line.

These decisions develop through comparison and iteration. Teams examine multiple views of the assortment before arriving at a final direction.

When merchandising tools cannot support that process directly, the analysis shifts into spreadsheets.

The Capability That Matters Most: Visual Pivot Views

One capability stood out immediately during the discussion: visual pivot views of the assortment.

For merchandising leaders, this type of view plays a central role in building product strategy.

It allows them to organize the assortment by category, style, delivery window, region, or price point and review how the assortment evolves across seasons.

She explained it simply:

“That pivot view… that’s the exact view you need to build your product strategy.”

When she saw that same analysis displayed visually rather than rebuilt in spreadsheets, her response was immediate:

“Basically everything I was doing in Excel… I can do it visually.”

This type of flexibility allows merchandising teams to evaluate assortment structure, track progress against targets, and make adjustments quickly.

Modern merchandising tools should make this type of analysis available directly within the platform.

This type of view is closely related to what many teams now call visual line planning. Modern merchandising tools allow teams to review assortments visually—by style, delivery window, category, or price architecture—while keeping product data connected to the assortment structure. Visual line planning helps merchandising leaders evaluate the balance of a collection, compare seasons, and make adjustments directly within the same system.

Merchandising Teams Work Across Multiple Seasons

Another point she raised reflects the reality of how merchandising timelines work.

Teams rarely focus on a single season.

Several timelines are usually active at once. Merchandising teams may be tracking one season currently in market while preparing marketing activation for the next, assorting the following season, and briefing the one after that.

She summarized it clearly:

“We’re always working on four seasons at once.”

Managing this complexity requires tools that allow teams to compare seasons easily and maintain visibility across multiple stages of the product lifecycle.

Historical performance, current assortment planning, and future development often need to be reviewed together.

When those connections are difficult to see, teams create additional files and spreadsheets to manage the process.

The Role of Better Merchandising Software

The purpose of merchandising software is to remove repetitive operational work and give teams clearer visibility into the assortment.

Much of the manual effort in merchandising involves tasks such as:

• rebuilding seasonal comparisons

• exporting data for analysis

• consolidating product updates across documents

• preparing assortment presentations

• communicating changes across teams

One example she shared illustrates how much time these activities can consume:

“We’re basically almost hiring an intern just to prepare weekly recap emails.”

When merchandising tools simplify these tasks, teams gain more time to focus on the decisions that shape the assortment: product architecture, option counts, assortment balance, and market relevance.

What Brands Should Look For in Merchandising Tools

Organizations evaluating merchandising software should focus on capabilities that support the core merchandising workflow.

Teams should be able to compare seasons easily.They should be able to build visual assortment views directly within the system.Regional teams should have visibility into global assortments.Option counts and assortment targets should be visible as the line develops.Merchandising, design, sales, and marketing teams should be able to collaborate using the same product context.

Equally important, the platform should allow teams to complete the analysis and decision-making process without leaving the system.

When teams must rely on external spreadsheets to evaluate the assortment, the merchandising workflow becomes fragmented.

Final Thought

The conversation reinforced a straightforward idea.

Merchandising teams benefit most from tools that support the way merchandising decisions actually happen.

They need visibility across categories, seasons, and regions. They need flexible views of the assortment and the ability to compare past and future collections easily.

At the end of the conversation, she summarized the experience in one sentence:

“It seems like all the decisions could be solved easily with a tool like this.”

Clear visibility allows merchandising teams to spend less time reconstructing data and more time shaping the assortment.

And that is ultimately the purpose of effective merchandising tools.