Multinational retail corporation automates planogram creation with Blue Yonder Planogram Generator 

The Challenge

A U.S.-based multinational retail corporation, operating a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores, needed help developing and implementing a process for planogram creation and maintenance across 250+ categories and 5,500 stores. With customer demand varying by location, category management teams sought more granular planogram goals, either by reducing the store count in clusters or moving toward store-specific planograms. 

The organization also aimed to reduce SG&A in the planogram drawing space, shifting resources from manual creation to analysis, market trend evaluation, and strategic merchandising. They sought to minimize reliance on vendors providing planograms to gain more internal control over assortments and strategy. Additionally, they needed the ability to programmatically generate high volumes of optimized planograms, respond quickly to market changes, and improve return on space. Automating the planogram process was a top priority for leadership to drive efficiency and strategic control across the organization

The Solution

Highspring began by documenting the retailer’s existing Blue Yonder Planogram Generator (PG) process and identifying pain points. The team then guided stakeholders through Highspring’s structured eight-step PG framework: 

1. Template creation – Developed template planograms representing best practices for each category. 

2. Target creation – Built shell planograms containing fixtures and unallocated assortment. 

3. Define assortment strategy – Outlined approach for organizing product assortments. 

4. Product and performance data load – Loaded product and performance data into PG. 

5. Action list development – Created rules dictating allocation, capacity, product placement, and merchandising collateral. 

6. Generate – Ran the planogram generation process. 

7. Revise – Reviewed and refined planogram outputs. 

8. Cleanup – Finalized planograms for deployment. 

Highspring also delivered a comprehensive training program to ensure adoption and skill building: 

• PG 101 | 16-hour crash course: Covered terminology, navigating the software, understanding action list phases, and troubleshooting fundamentals. 

• PG 201 | Expert-led scenarios: Demonstrated advanced capabilities using client data, with interactive “what-if” exercises. 
• PG 301 | Practical development: Teams built real templates, targets, and action lists under expert guidance to understand nuances and variables typical in PG projects. 

Our Impact

As a result of the engagement, the retailer established a repeatable, scalable process for automated planogram generation. The new process enabled the team to programmatically generate high volumes of optimized planograms, reallocate capacity from manual drawing to analysis and strategic merchandising, minimize reliance on external vendors to maintain greater control over assortments and strategy, respond more quickly to market shifts, and support long-term SG&A reduction goals.