Top business pressures within demand management:
- increased demand volatility
- growing complexity of global operations
- rising supply chain management costs
- escalating demand for service from customers
- economic and financial volatility
Strategic actions being taken by companies:
- improve customer forecast collaboration
- integrate customer collaboration processes with internal business processes
- develop a more responsive inventory placement strategy
- improve statistical forecasting
- improve data management (including customer / channel data)
Operational challenges faced on sell side:
- consistently inaccurate demand forecasts
- poor or late visibility into channel sell-through to the end customer
- channel inventory is not staged accurately enough to match demand
- poor or late visibility into channel inventories, especially after fulfillment of purchase orders
To achieve best-in-class performance, companies must:
- create the ability to segment demand forecasts based on key product and customer characteristics
- close the loop with supply and inventory
