1. Forecasting

Know what your customers want before they do

No matter what type of business you’re in, companies need some kind of future estimate upon which they can build a plan. Forecasting – with the fewest errors possible – helps companies determine which products or services to launch or withdraw, which markets to enter or exit, where to grow, and where to cut back. And with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley and analysts’ pressure on executives, the need for accurate forecasting is more critical than ever. Unfortunately, most organizations find themselves disconnected from their own data, which has a dramatic impact on the bottom line. For the average $100 million revenue company, forecasting and demand planning error is currently decreasing profitability between $3.5 million and $18 million annually. Demand Foresight delivers the only solution that includes customer inputs throughout the supply chain – tightly linking demand with supply. With Demand Foresight, the ability to access key data and reports is combined with the ability to model different scenarios for financial planning and to monitor strategic goals and performance. With quick insight into which products have predictable demand patterns – and those that don’t – you can rapidly discover the valuable interrelations that exist between products, sizes, colors, price-cuts, promotions, and new product introductions. As insight develops, the path toward profitability becomes clear, and you’ll likely know what your customers want before they do.

2. Planning

The closest thing to a crystal ball

If you could read your customers’ minds, you would never see overstock and never be oversold. What’s the closest thing to a crystal ball?

Demand Commander is a quantum leap in forecasting and demand planning technology, helping you better predict, understand, manage, and adapt to customer demand to grow revenues and increase profit. It helps companies plan the optimal balance between supply and demand. Built on Demand Foresight’s Interactive Neural Computing software, Demand Commander brings your system's data-based learning together with user instinct and experience for the first time in a supply chain application. In the planning module, forecasted demand is automatically compared with current inventory to determine net requirements – for every item and every customer at every location.

Demand Factor Learning Through constant testing and evaluation, our software creates a universe of data for every product/location combination, reduces it to what is relevant, looks for relationships, and then applies these relationships to the forecast model.

Creation & Competition Models compete to be the best using proprietary intelligent optimization techniques. Demand Foresight creates its own non-linear models for complex scenarios and then submits the best and most accurate forecast for that item.

Consensus Building With Demand Commander, everyone in the organization (including partners and suppliers) can see the forecast, and easily add to it what they know to be different (i.e., price changes, supply constraints, promotions, etc.), building better consensus from the outset.

3. Reporting Instant clarity and insight Great information is useless if you can’t make any sense of it. To provide real value, data needs context delivered in an understandable format, and it needs to be available whenever and wherever needed. Demand Foresight takes this to heart with its advanced reporting solutions. Built on the latest technologies including .NET, OLAP and Ajax, Demand Foresight provides a powerful and flexible reporting solution that puts the reports and dashboards users need at their fingertips – quickly, and without the need for IT support. Unlike large analytics and business intelligence providers who try to retro-fit their solutions for forecasting and demand planning, Demand Foresight reports are designed with forecasting in mind. Bringing together a company’s entire value chain, Demand Foresight Reporting Solutions provide clarity around key business indicators and provide detailed insight into what will happen next, based on what’s happening today. Demand Foresight Reporting Solutions are also easy to use and seamlessly adapt to your constantly changing business.

Key features: • Easy-to-use interface designed in conjunction with Demand Foresight customers • Available online as stand-alone application for dispersed users • Easily exportable reports using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or PDF documents

4. Adaptability

The more complex your selling environment, the better we work

These illustrations show how Demand Foresight’s Demand Commander helps you see and avoid pitfalls unique to your niche, vertical or industry. To see the range of Demand Foresight clients who are increasing their profits with our software, click here.

Office Products
In the office products industry, success means delivering superior customer service, managing short product lifecycles and reducing supply chain costs. As a result, optimized supply chain management is a vital part of accurate forecasting and demand planning.

Industry leading companies like Georgia-Pacific Office Products rely on Demand Commander to solve these critical issues, and more.

Where many demand management systems are thwarted by an overflow of information and business complexity, Demand Foresight's modeling methods thrive on it. In fact, the more complex the selling environment – the better Demand Foresight works. Demand Foresight can take loads of point-of-sale (POS) and vendor-managed-inventory (VMI) data, process it, and then make it available at any level of aggregation, from a total customer or total product views all the way down to SKU by location and/or customer. The result is a minimum 25% reduction in demand planning and forecasting error.

“With Demand Foresight we can make sense of volumes of POS, and customer inventory data, and use it to understand our business, and forecast it down to the SKU and location level. With more accurate forecasts, we will be able to improve our service level with key accounts, maximize profitability and better manage our unique inventory environment.” 

Technology
In the technology industry, rapid change is the norm. Today’s biggest products are status quo tomorrow. New products, new markets, new customer demands and new financial goals seem to be introduced almost daily. Yet, most tech companies are plagued by an untimely and disjointed flow of information, which results in late order fulfillment, unhappy customers, and too much or too little inventory.

Creating accurate forecasts in this environment is more than a struggle. Demand Commander changes all of this, giving technology companies the ability to respond to change and strike an optimal balance between inventory and customer service levels. Our next-generation software learns and adapts to your business with an easy-to-read interface for understanding demand influences and making changes initiated by existing data.

Food & Beverage
Dealing with products from fresh fish to frozen orange juice, food and beverage companies face a complex replenishment equation. High customer demands and strong competition combined with firm expiration dates and low-margin perishable products make inventory management a critical component of profitability.

Add to this seasonal product availability, discounts and promotions, and clear planning for the future is no simple task in this industry.

Demand Foresight’s Demand Commander signifies the next generation of forecasting technology and demand planning process optimization. It offers the only solution that takes customer inputs and carries them completely through the supply chain, tightly linking demand with supply. With quick insight into which products have foreseeable patterns and those that don’t, customers can quickly discover the valuable interrelations that exist between products, sizes, colors, price-cuts, promotions, and new product introductions.

Putting Demand Foresight’s Demand Commander into action, companies can dramatically reduce forecasting errors, leading to reduced inventory expenses and improved productivity — satisfying your hunger for profitable growth.