Demand Planning Software: Your Guide to More Accurate Demand Planning
Why Accurate Demand Planning Matters
Conventional forecasting techniques fall short. Old methods and manually updated spreadsheets cannot cope with vast volumes of data. Big data means more opportunities for accurate demand planning if you do it the right way. Outdated systems and Excel formulas are not designed to capture these opportunities with today’s volume of data.
In a business environment where stakes are high, minor oversights or miscalculations can result in losses worth millions of dollars. An approach that involves not adapting to the latest forecasting and planning techniques can be a liability. Traditional methods can take too much time, invite human errors, cannot adapt to new trends, and do not scale efficiently.
Departmental silos and inadequate access to data can hamper forecast accuracy. When business data is distributed across various teams and systems, highly manual processing cannot accommodate all the relevant data resources. This results in subpar forecasting accuracy.
Additionally, complex systems can be slow to adopt and inflexible for users. Highly compound solutions are often hard to adapt to various business needs and have complicated interfaces that discourage a significant number of demand planners. With such solutions, demand planning processes can lack consistency across a company and fail to ultimately achieve inventory optimization. That’s why your business needs demand forecasting software that can easily connect to any EPR system, is easy to understand, and can accurately predict for future demand.
Use Accurate Analytics to Improve Forecasting
Business leaders need to recognize the key drivers that are making or breaking their company’s supply chain with enhanced forecasting accuracy. Thanks to the latest technologically powered dashboards and advanced analytics, finance and demand planners can now access, compare and manage virtually unlimited data with just a few clicks. Intelligent demand management software automatically makes sense of this massive data and utilizes it more quickly and efficiently compared to traditional systems or Excel spreadsheets.
Accurate Analytics and Forecasting Can Help Businesses in the:
- Adapt in real time – automatically recognizing issues such as slow-moving products and additional future demands according to the current and future trends. The demand planning process can help planners plan ahead for tomorrow with today’s real-time data.
- Drive more value from more data – relying on automated systems to process a wide variety of business information from multiple sources and practical demand planning tools ensures growing data volumes lead to better business value.
- Focus on decision-making that matters the most – demand planning and forecasting system take up all the hard and manual work from planners’ shoulders, allows them to focus on more value-added tasks, and enables them to make more strategically planned decisions.
A Business-Focused Solution for Strengthening Demand Planning Accuracy
While there are industry pain points that may be common for all organizations, there’s no one size fits all system that can help with granular business problems. A custom-made solution that ensures perfect adoption is a must, more so for addressing requirements that differ according to the business or the entire organization.
For comprehensive and compatible business processing, you need demand planning software that provides a full-scale solution that seamlessly introduces various algorithms into day-to-day workflows. They include:
- Fully automated integration with already existing IT infrastructure
- Massive computing power in the cloud scales linearly as the geographic market expands and data sources multiply.
- A customizable and user-friendly visualization for a better understanding of the forecast monitoring and adjustments process.
- Support in change management and adoption process
Must Have Capabilities for Demand Planning and Forecasting Solutions
- Detect possible cognitive errors for each product and run scenario analysis to evaluate potential changes.
- Access large-scale cloud computing via a modern, user-friendly front end.
- Interactive and integrating dashboard with any ERP system.
- Identify critical business drives and zero in on any future uncertainties.
Demand planning software enhances communication and integration among members of your planning team. In this constantly evolving business world, efficient forecasting is vital to gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage. It is crucial to optimizing productivity, prompt responsiveness to customers’ needs, improve delivery, and reduce operational costs. Accurate demand planning and forecasting can mean the difference between being all set for the dynamic shifts in the market and being left behind. Overall forecasting is essential to business growth and success.
Implementing advanced demand forecasting software will take your manufacturing and inventory planning processes to the next level of production efficiency by taking leverage of the historical data you already possess in your ERP system. Demand planning is a step in the right direction.
Another crucial best practice is to do your due diligence when selecting demand planning software. Your software should automate tasks such as statistical analysis for tracking KPIs and calculating optimal stock levels, allowing your team to observe and evaluate the results, collaborate with other groups, and adjust plans as required. Your demand management software should be easy to use, intuitive, and integrated with your ERP systems and inventory management.
With 250+ algorithms, Avercast’s demand planning software ensures growth and cost savings. Our team of experts can talk the specifics with you, so connect with us for a free demo or a call.
