Capture all demand data in a central place (a demand hub) to collaborate in a synchronized, real-time planning environment Gear procurement and production with quick reactions to market demand Allow delegated forecast/budget management Turn data into information with an easy-to-use graphical user interface, improving analysis and accuracy
When you calculate forecasts for existing products that have clear trends and seasonal patterns, it's usually sufficient to look only at demand history. However, when demand is inconsistent or new – e.g., market segments, products, distribution centers, customer demands or promotional programs – you need to collaborate demand, sales and budget information in order to gain accurate forecasts.
IBS Demand Planning can be used as a marketing and sales driven forecasting application that runs together with IBS Inventory Control. The solution can also run in conjunction with two other planning modules, IBS Sales and Operations Planning (aggregate planning over time) and IBS Supply Planning (including distribution resource planning – DRP), as part of a more comprehensive planning and forecasting solution with IBS Enterprise.
DESIGNED FOR DYNAMIC REQUIREMENTS With IBS Demand Planning, you can rapidly update, manage and review sales figures to build precise sales forecasts based on the market. You can create or revise a demand plan at any time.
FAST VISUAL RESULTS An intuitive graphical user interface streamlines the planning process with multiple windows and details that allow drill-down.
A supporting planner's workbench lets you view, manipulate and update planning data from different perspectives and diverse formats such as pie charts and other graphs, providing a clear overview of planning forecasts with simulations and analyses.
TAILOR THE SOLUTION TO YOUR NEEDS IBS Demand Planning offers functionality that lets you customize the software to fit your requirements including:
Select base to start from – The solution gives you wide flexibility in creating new plans based on other demand plans, sales statistics, calculated forecasts or demand history from IBS Inventory Control. Several forecasting units – Choose from different forecasting units, including sales value, cost value, weight, volume and stock unit. Flexible period handling – Plans can be defined per day, week or month and cover part of a year or include several years. Bottom-up and top-down forecasting – You can forecast and retrieve a forecasting base on an item level. For example, aggregate the forecast to see a full forecast for a salesperson. You can then break that forecast down by item level. Planning by item level or by item groups – Demand planning can be performed on detailed item or warehouse level, bottom-up or top-down. You can also apply demand planning by an item-grouping field such as item group, item planning or item category. You can combine item keys with customer-related keys. User-defined planning hierarchies – Any mix of fields can be used in your business model plan to represent your demand plan hierarchy. Different keys can be used for different demand plans; with top-down and bottom-up aggregations and de-aggregations, or by alternative hierarchies. Simultaneous plans with different keys – You can use several demand plans with different keys at the same time. Fixed or flexible calculation rules – Choose whether changes to a calculation rule on a detailed level will affect the entire demand plan or not. For example, if one item group increases, you can determine whether that increase should automatically result in a proportional decrease for other item groups. Sales and promotion follow-up – Plans can be exported to the IBS Business Information Warehouse, where the data can be used to support sales and promotion follow-up. Control functions in order entry – You can mark a demand plan to use for controlling order entry in IBS Enterprise. A warning message will be issued during order entry when the actual forecast numbers have been consumed.
MULTI-DIMENSIONAL FORECASTING IBS Demand Planning gives you the ability to produce multi-dimensional forecasts at different aggregation levels – from the bottom up or from the top down. Gain extreme flexibility in meeting your planning demands by aggregating forecasts from various dimensions:
Market dimension – By country, region and/or customer Time dimension – By months, weeks and/or days Production dimension – By family, group and/or products
BUILT-IN AUTHORITY HANDLING IBS Demand Planning supports the internal review and delegation of supported demand plans. The solution ensures full security among users. For example, several sales employees can update or maintain the same plan without seeing each other's figures.
SIX DIFFERENT DEMAND PLANS AVAILABLE IBS Demand Planning lets you generate different types of demand plans that you can fine tune and use to create forecasts that take account of external information.Campaigns plan – This plan handles further sales based on adding planned campaign numbers to the forecast calculation. Normal demand plan – Input is the statistical forecast, which you can manually adjust as needed based on capacity problems, shortages of goods or other factors. The updated demand plan is transmitted to statistical forecast calculations. Budget plan – Import sales statistics or the statistical forecast to budget sales on all levels. The plan updates the IBS Business Information Warehouse for subsequent follow-up of sales numbers measured against the budget. This plan does not affect forecast calculation. Speculation forecast – Use this plan for new products that have no historical information in IBS Inventory Control. The forecast numbers are then added to forecast calculation Additional forecast – This plan allows you to make exceptions for selected criteria; for example, for selected large customers. Your Demand Planning figures are then replacing the statistical forecast calculated in Inventory Control for these selected customers; at the same time, Inventory Control calculates the statistical forecast for the remaining customer base. Item-based – Use this plan in conjunction with the statistical forecast calculated by Inventory Control. Tools within IBS Demand Planning are available to use as an advanced method for maintaining and adjusting the statistical forecast. This type of plan has no customer-related information.
