Forecasting

Forecasting

Optimiza Demand Planner for Complex Forecasting Environments

Optimiza Demand Planner or ODP is an advanced demand planning application. It is designed to allow an organisation to build and maintain an accurate demand forecast within their business.

The tool is designed to give demand planners an early and accurate view of future sales plans, booked orders and demand forecasts, allowing rapid and effective decision-making.

Companies can typically expect a 15-20% improvement in forecast accuracy. The impact on a company's financials is significant, with few other planning initiatives being able to yield equivalent returns. Research has shown that this typically results in:

1. On average 15% less inventory.

2. 17% improvement in perfect order performance.

3. 35% shorter cash-to-cash cycle.

Demand Planning for Ever-Increasing Complexities

Simple item-level forecasting can satisfy many businesses, but with ever-increasing complexity being introduced by shorter product life cycles, ever-expanding regional and global customer bases and an explosion of new product variations and alternative brands, advanced demand management becomes a necessity.

In addition, the way we do business is also changing. Manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers need to constantly collaborate with their suppliers to ensure they are synchronised with demand variations caused by promotional plans and new product introductions.

Hence, the need for an accurate and up-to-date demand forecast is greater than ever and the challenge companies face is to design an effective multi-dimensional model that handles this complexity but is still easy to understand, operate and maintain.

ODP has been designed to meet these requirements.

Optimiza Demand Planning Functionality

ODP uses multi-level forecasting techniques that dynamically calculate seasonality and trends, intelligently selecting the right algorithm for each product level and aggregating or disaggregating the results up or down the product, geographical and / or channel hierarchy.

ODP now contains highly flexible dashboard reporting on a range of metrics, including budget variances, accuracy alerts and margin analyses. These facilitate an intuitive review of problematic forecast data through easy drill downs used in combination with graphical summaries and dynamic sensitivity thresholds.

ODP includes Data Streaming, a concept unique to sales forecasting software. This allows the forecast to be viewed and managed from any angle, for example:

Marketing can view and manage the forecast by channel.

Sales can manage and view the forecast and budget by account manager.

Finance can manage and view the forecast by cost and revenue.

Production can manage and view the forecast by units and volume.
.
Logistics can manage and view the forecast by inventory type.

ODP provides one single version of the truth, ensuring that all users look at the same numbers from different angles, making sense of what they see, and turning data into decision-making information.

ODP provides the most flexible screen layouts and security settings available in sales forecasting software. Users can be provided with any level of access to functionality, products, families and models. This makes demand management collaboration a reality, giving you confidence that all users, including customers and suppliers, can view and edit only what is relevant to them.

ODP allows for profiling which lets the user set up any number of events, promotion types or demand profiles that can be applied to individual items or families of products. Profiles can be viewed in libraries that allow the user to apply them with ease. In this way, the system can learn from past events and enhance future forecasts.

ODP interfaces with in-house host or ERP systems in a number of different ways, i.e. via a simple flat file transfer, an ETL direct database interface tool or our SAP-certified interface tool.