Forecast Management done right leads to Demand Planning Success

Spreadsheet programs are well equipped to handle simple tasks, the user interface is easy and they meet most basic needs. However, most companies that rely on spreadsheet programs for their sales forecasting needs are unaware that there are better alternatives- affordable demand planning solutions that provide strategic value, improve visibility to the supply chain management process and propel company growth. Demand Solutions Forecast Management opens up a whole new world for supply chain management - better demand planning, improved inventory planning and, ultimately, increased efficiency and profits. Our customers in more than 75 countries rely on us for sales forecasting solutions based on logical, understandable and highly effective formulas.

With improved inventory planning, you achieve that balance between inventory investment and optimal customer service levels- leading to efficient supply chain management and enhanced profitability.

Supply chain management at any level of detail

Unlike some sales forecasting and demand planning systems that require your IT department to hard-code your product family structures or pyramid relationships, Forecast Management groupings are user-defined, enabling you to combine groups of items into a consolidated view that best supports your needs and leads to not only improved inventory planning but better business decision making. From day one, users can define and create their own product families, reflecting the dynamic ways your sales, marketing, production planning, purchasing, finance and other managers view your business. If you can quantify what you need to know, you can find the answer in Demand Solutions. Including:

• What are my total sales by brand? In dollars? In Euros? In any currency?
• What’s the current fiscal year projection for each business unit and the entire company?
• Which segment of our business projects the best growth this year?
• Which items have the highest and fewest inventory turns?
• Who are my most profitable customers?

Improved Inventory Planning:

360 degree insight for faster, better decision-making

When it comes to sales forecasting and inventory planning, many managers take the 80/20 principle for granted. Our ABC Analysis will rank any segment of your business (items, customers, product families, etc.) to identify the profitable opportunities and to weed out the underperformers. Your decision making abilities are quickly improved if our sales forecasting system shows that 90% of revenue comes from 10% of your customers or that the bottom 40% of your items account for just 1% of your Gross Margins.

Objectively manage new product introductions for optimized inventory planning

While it’s undeniably difficult to accurately forecast new or repositioned products, it’s equally hard to be objective about their prospects. Forecast Management’s Curves enable you to forecast new products by cloning the demand pattern from similar products, and then updating forecasts by applying initial sales. The Supersession feature improves inventory planning by closely managing product phase-outs and phase-ins.

Fine tune your planning process

Knowing many managers will have insight and that will influence outcome, Demand Solutions will accept multiple inputs—including customer sales forecasts, management overrides, anecdotal notes about future developments, promotional curves and much more- that will help ensure accurate, quality sales forecasts.

Flexible data exchange - use with any ERP system

Our clients use Demand Solutions as the demand forecasting front end to virtually every ERP package. We make it simple to interface with your existing systems and to move your data into and out of our software. Demand Solutions point-and-click User-Definable Import/Export utility enables you to quickly and simply define the data that you are importing or exporting. Also, the Demand Solutions Batch Builder is a very intuitive tool for scripting your repetitive procedures.

Dashboards for better response

All the sales forecasting data you need for smart business decisions is within Demand Solutions Forecast Management. With Dashboards, you can easily view summary data to drive inventory optimization and profits. Customizable by job function, Dashboards allow planners to see the views they need to enable quick decisions and respond to management’s ever-changing desire to see sales forecasting information in multiple formats.

See how Demand Solutions sales forecasting has led to supply chain management success for thousands of companies by visiting our customer videos page.