Supply chain management (SCM) is composed of many components, including supply chain execution and supply chain planning. The latest is also composed of several factors and phases, one of the most important being demand planning, which is usually based on a statistical forecast. However, forecasting can be quite hard, especially when you do it based on historical data. Luckily, demand planning software can help you. But what is that? And why is it important?
- What is demand planning software?
First of all, it’s necessary to clear out what demand planning is at all. Basically, demand planning is the process of forecasting or predicting the consumer demand for a service or product so the company can produce it more efficiently.
You can forecast demand using various methods, but the most used is analyzing the historical data of the product or service. Of course, you can also combine methods to achieve the best result possible.
So, what is demand planning software? It is software – which is an application, program, or script – that does the demand planning forecasting for you. It is essential to help you with supply chain planning, which is a major component of your business’ SCM.
- How can demand planning software help my company?
Anyone that worked with demand planning knows how difficult and exhausting this process is. It is based on lots of analyzing and reading, and the results can change based on any small alteration you make to the readings. Therefore, sometimes human work isn’t as trustworthy as software can be.
Demand planning software helps you prepare for future customer demand by implementing and suggesting tools to help manage and plan future inventory and production. That way, you can check what will be your customers’ mid and long-term needs easily.
This software usually uses artificial intelligence (A.I), the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and more technologies that assist the company in increasing both the predictions and the efficiency of the prediction by analyzing several factors, including historical data.
The demand forecast is the foundation of the entire demand planning process, as the company can’t plan what they’ll do in the future without knowing their customers’ needs and wants. With proper demand planning software, this task becomes way easier.
For example, the software can be connected to the point-of-sale data so it can pull information directly from suppliers and distributors, allowing your company to use real-time data in your planning and analysis processes.
- Where can I find good demand planning software?
There is several wonderful demand planning software available. Still, one of the best is certainly the one offered by John Galt Solutions, a professional software company with several decades of experience.
Their software is fast, with the implementations typically going live in only twelve weeks, which is impressive since this process usually takes way more months than that. It uses IoT sensors to add real-time intelligence so the analysis can always be authentic.
