Next Generation Demand Management

Chapter 8The Strategic Roadmap

The purpose of this chapter is to outline the demand planning self-assessment, identify gaps, and create a strategic roadmap to the next generation demand management, which is a journey that requires investment in people, process, analytics, and technology. The roadmap will guide supply chain leaders in determining the sequence of actions required to bring all four dimensions of the demand planning process into focus, along with a step-by-step strategic roadmap.

CURRENT STATE VERSUS FUTURE STATE

Transitioning from current state to future state demand planning seldom evolves slowly over time naturally. Companies that have successfully moved from current state to future state are dedicated to focusing their efforts on improving their demand planning capabilities by investing in people, process, analytics, and technology. Future state brings structure to the demand planning function, with the goal of bringing more consistency to the overall process with emphasis not only on improving forecast accuracy but also on providing actionable insights through predictive analytics to support demand generation. At this level of process capabilities, companies are able to integrate downstream consumption (true demand) data with upstream shipments (supply) data from their demand signal repositories, and ERP transaction systems to identity demand patterns and to produce calculated fact-based forecasts that are driven by consumer demand where statistically feasible. ...