The “Fore” keys to managing supply
chain demand
No matter the industry, companies need some kind of future estimate upon which they can build a plan. Forecasting, Planning, Reporting, and Adaptability drive your supply chain profitability, and Demand Foresight’s sales forecasting software can help you with these four key aspects of your business.
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. Demand Foresight delivers the only sales forecasting software solution that includes customer inputs throughout the supply chain – tightly linking demand with supply. 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 forecasting engine brings your system’s data-based learning together with user instinct and experience for the first time in a sales planning software solution. In the Demand 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 is a process of constant testing and evaluation in which 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 Commander 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 allows everyone in the organization (including partners and suppliers) to see the forecast, and easily add to it what they know to be different (i.e., price changes, supply constraints, promotions), 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 Commander 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 Commander reports are designed with forecasting in mind. Bringing together a company’s entire value chain, our sales planning software’s Reporting Solutions provide clarity around key business indicators and provide detailed insight into what will happen next, based on what’s happening today.
4. Adaptability
The more complex your selling environment, the more we can help
Change is the new 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.
Where many demand management systems are thwarted by an overflow of information and business complexity, Demand Commander’s modeling methods thrive on it. In fact, the more complex the selling environment – the better Demand Commander works. It 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.
Creating accurate forecasts in this environment is more than a struggle. Our forecasting and planning software , Demand Commander, changes all of this, giving companies the ability to respond to change and strike an optimal balance between inventory and customer service levels. Our innovative technology learns and adapts to your business with an easy-to-read interface for understanding demand influences and making changes initiated by existing data.