The most important word in a great user interface? User.
Demand planning user interfaces balance the ability to efficiently get complex tasks done, but with easily understandable displays and controls. Workflow analysis and continuous improvement allow for that design to provide both the most power and flexibility to the users and the most natural and logical flow. In the case of demand planning, the users are really a team of individuals with varying responsibilities, expertise, contributions, and expectations. For the demand planning user interface, the purpose is to support those users toward the same goal, however: building the most accurate consensus demand plan.
Beyond forecast accuracy, primary features of the demand planning user interface are collaboration and consensus building, focus on customer satisfaction, and supporting a resilient supply chain.
Provide Collaborative Workspace for Consensus Building
The talent and experience of all of your departments should come together with one centralized planning platform.
- From day 1, operate with a display that is personalized for your business model and user abilities, not the other way around.
- Form aggregations to customize your data for specific roles, with synching between aggregations that allows for top-down and bottom-up planning.
- Provide one-stop access to POS, sales, marketing, budget, and pricing data to allow real-time coordination and report generation.
- Build what-if scenarios and facilitate business continuity with inputs including forecasts, pricing, promotional data.
Keep Customer-Centricity as a Focus
You make your customers a priority. You need tools that will monitor and predict influencers on their demand to help build brand loyalty as well as to drive your bottom-line.
- View and manage your business with a particular customer even if they cross sales reps, regions, and product families.
- Pull customer specific data from your ERP to allow you to make accurate business decisions for each.
Maintain Supply Chain Resilience to Build Your Competitive Edge
You depend on the exception-based management to trigger proactive, efficient decision-making.
- Drill into problem areas and quickly determine the root cause.
- Schedule alerts to flag and notify users of sales, inventory, and purchasing issues in real-time.
- Tap a variety of external factors such as economic, demographic, supplier, and customer sales data to increase visibility.