Demand Planning & Forecasting Suite
Automate demand forecasting, align sales–operations plans, and optimize inventory to improve service levels and reduce working capital.
The solution uses statistical forecasting, ML-based forecasting, and collaborative planning workflows to create a single, consensus demand plan across Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain, and Finance.
Key Features
Forecasting Engine
- Multi-level forecasting: By product, SKU, customer, channel, region, and time (day/week/month/quarter).
- Statistical models: Moving average, exponential smoothing, ARIMA, seasonality detection, outlier correction.
- ML-based models: Algorithm selection based on accuracy (e.g., gradient boosting / random forest / neural models).
- Promotion & event modeling: Lift factors for campaigns, price changes, launches, holidays, competitor events.
- Scenario planning: Best / base / worst-case forecasts with side-by-side comparison.
- Automatic model selection: System recommends the best-fit model per SKU-location based on history and accuracy.
Demand Collaboration
● Sales input workflows: Sales teams can adjust system forecasts with comments and justifications.
● Marketing inputs: Campaign calendars and expected uplift captured and linked to the forecast.
● Consensus planning: Workflow to move from system forecast → sales forecast → consensus forecast.
● Approval workflows: Role-based approvals and locks for frozen periods.
● Versioning: Maintain multiple forecast versions with audit trail and change history.
S&OP & Supply Integration
- Integration with Supply Planning: Export consensus demand to supply planning/MRP/TMS systems.
- Capacity visibility: Overlay demand vs. production and logistics capacity constraints.
- Inventory policy alignment: Connect demand plans to safety stock and reorder policies.
- KPI dashboards: Forecast accuracy, bias, service level, fill rate, stock-outs, and excess inventory.
Analytics & Reporting
- Forecast accuracy analytics: MAPE, MAD, bias by product, region, planner, and time bucket.
- Exceptions management: Automatic alerts for large forecast deviations, demand spikes, or drops.
- ABC/XYZ segmentation: Classify SKUs to apply differentiated planning strategies.
- Root-cause analysis: Drill-downs by customer, channel, region, and event.
- Self-service reports: Excel-like grid, pivot-style analytics, and export options.
Data Management & Integrations
- Data inputs: Historical sales, shipments, orders, returns, pricing, promotions, and external factors.
- Connectors: APIs / flat file / database integration with ERP, CRM, POS, e-commerce, and WMS/TMS.
- Master data: Product, location, customer hierarchies with effective dating and attribute management.
- Security & governance: Role-based access, audit logs, SSO support, and data encryption.
User Experience
- Web-based UI: Responsive, browser-based workspace with no desktop install.
- Planner workbench: Personalized views, saved layouts, filters, and favorites.
- Mass-edit & overrides: Inline editing, bulk adjustments, percentage and absolute changes.
- Comments & collaboration: Threaded comments on SKUs, customers, and forecasts.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Leverage your IT with our Operartional Technology (OT) convergence platform.
Business Benefits
Financial Benefits
- Inventory reduction: Typically 10–20% reduction in overall inventory through better visibility and policy alignment.
- Working capital improvement: Reduction in stock holding days and freeing of cash tied in inventory.
- Revenue uplift: 1–3% revenue increase through better product availability and reduced stock-outs.
- Reduced obsolescence: 15–30% reduction in slow-moving and obsolete inventory.
- Lower expediting costs: 10–25% reduction in premium freight and urgent production changes.
Operational Benefits
- Improved forecast accuracy: 10–30 percentage point improvement in MAPE for key SKUs/channels.
- Higher service levels: Increase in OTIF / fill-rate by 3–8 percentage points.
- Shorter planning cycle: Reduction of monthly planning cycle time by 30–50%.
- Standardized S&OP process: Structured, repeatable monthly/weekly demand review.
Strategic Benefit
- Single source of truth: One consolidated demand plan for all stakeholders.
- Faster response: Improved agility to respond to market changes and disruptions.
- Better cross-functional alignment: Finance, Sales, and Operations work on common numbers.
- Scalability: Supports expansion to new products, markets, and channels without exponential planner load.
Technical & Functional Requirements
Functional Requirements
- Historical data: Minimum 18–24 months of clean sales/shipments data recommended.
- Master data: Product codes, hierarchy (e.g., family–category–SKU), location hierarchy, customer/channel hierarchy.
- Calendar: Business calendar configuration (week definitions, holidays, year start).
Technical Requirements
- Deployment options:
- Cloud (SaaS – preferred)
- On-premise (optional, subject to separate sizing)
- Typical stack (for SaaS):
- Application: Modern web framework (React/Angular/Vue) with REST/GraphQL APIs.
- Backend: Microservices on Node.js/.NET/Java or equivalent.
- Database: Relational DB for transactions, time-series/OLAP store for analytics.
- Security: HTTPS, TLS, JWT/SSO, role-based access control.
- Integration requirements:
- ERP (sales orders, invoices, inventory)
- CRM (opportunities, large deals)
- POS/e-commerce (sell-out data where available)
- WMS/TMS (for inventory and shipment visibility – optional)
- File/API interfaces for external data (market data, macro indicators, etc.)
- Infrastructure (if on-premise):
- Application servers sized based on user count and data volume.
- Database server with sufficient CPU, memory, and SSD storage.
- Backup and DR policies as per client IT standards.
- Access & Devices:
- Modern browsers (Chrome / Edge / Firefox).
