Excel sheets were initially used by demand planners to calculate demand which left scope for mistakes. Thus, businesses required a more advanced demand forecasting software that takes into account all aspects of demand and generates analytical data to assist them in deciding how much inventory to hold on hand to meet demand in the upcoming time. It reduces inaccurate projections, stock management errors, and market adaptability by synchronizing all the data from the ERP, CRM, and external market data.
Demand forecasting can help your retail organization meet the fluctuating client demand by assisting with inventory management. By precisely anticipating the demand for your products and services using demand planning software coupled with sales and operations planning processes, you can adapt to the changing business needs.
Demand planning is based on a number of factors, such as past sales information, seasonality, consumer behavior patterns, demand fluctuations, and more. As a result, it should contain some of the following components, which can help with the analysis of all the factors::
- Interactive Statistical Forecasting
Utilizing interactive statistical forecasting, you can make quantity predictions while implementing various strategies to improve the procedure in a flexible, user-friendly, and interactive system. Additionally, by taking seasonality and intermittent demand into account, you may test several hypotheses and produce estimates for any particular time period. A good demand planning software predicts future demand based on historical sales data. It chooses an appropriate strategy and assesses the numerous factors that affect the outcome.
- Workflow
A good demand forecasting software facilitates collaboration, speeds up the process, and helps monitor the demand planning process. Sending the appropriate emails to the appropriate recipients should enable you to keep track of developments and provide updates on the prediction. The program should automate demand planning processes, including resolving exceptions, gathering data, interfacing with the sales and operations teams, and so forth. It promotes efficiency and adaptability of the company to external factors.
- Segment Inspection
Using segmentation analysis, businesses can divide up various clientele, markets, demographics, and other components to aid in development and planning. It enables planners to adjust targets for particular components and predictions and monitor KPIs for performance evaluation.
- Consensus Demand Planning
Demand planning software should have a user-friendly interface that can be customized to meet the different requirements of different company users. Plans must be available online, on mobile devices, and in Excel sheets. There should be options for cell locking, cost distribution, aggregation, and disaggregation. You should be able to undertake consensus demand planning, which necessitates a number of processes, by fusing the future baseline demand with marketing and sales initiatives. It facilitates the achievement of P&L goals while establishing formal demand planning procedures. It must also provide all departments with a secure, dependable means of cloud communication.
- Data Integration
To utilize various planning applications, you can consolidate transaction data and master data from source systems using data integration. You need to connect with a variety of data sources, such as past sales data and third-party data on present and future industry trends, to estimate demand. In order for businesses to use internal and external data to make informed decisions, there needs to be strong connectivity between diverse source systems. By using a good demand planning software, businesses may fully control all operations rather than leaving them in the hands of the IT department. A user-friendly interface validates the facts, making it simple to manually change them as necessary.
- Promotion Planning
Promoting products increases consumer demand for retailers. A good demand planning software should be able to plan promotions for a product or service while leveraging marketing tools, resources, and methods. Real-time adjustments can be made by retail businesses to increase profits and stay informed about continuing trade promotions.
- Reporting, Dashboarding, and Alerting
The best demand forecasting software should offer interactive analyses and reports as well as notify you of any data adjustments or exceptions. All demand plans, reports, and forecast KPIs should also be accessible via Powerpoint, Excel, the web, and mobile devices and represented in dashboards.
- Group EOQ
Traditional EOQ is determined by each SKU rather than a group of SKUs. In a real-world supply chain, purchase orders frequently contain dozens or even hundreds of SKUs. Demand planning software not only enables regular EOQ computation but also includes group EOQ, which goes much beyond the typical procedure and makes EOQ applicable to purchase orders with groups of SKUs.
- Master Data Maintenance
End-users should be able to modify the hierarchy levels in working models by changing them in real-time as customers, special offers, and new products are seen and updated. An effective demand forecasting system links to the data source automatically through master data management and offers users a user-friendly interface for accessing and editing the data. Master data also needs to be adjusted to match specific processes and updated often. The system must work for simple data entering with data checking.
About the Company
By combining historical sales data with additional factors like seasonality, customer trends, and others, Kronoscope, a powerful demand planning software powered by AI from Fountain9, enables organizations to make precise estimates. Businesses can reduce the difficulty of managing large inventories by optimally stocking their inventory while taking the anticipated demand for the forthcoming period into account. The quantity that must be stored to appropriately meet demand can be calculated by the program, which can accurately estimate demand for each SKU item.
