Manhattan Associates Integrated Planning Solutions Enhance Inventory Optimisation

Flexible Demand Forecasting Helps Companies Balance Inventory Levels with Customer Demand
 
Leading supply chain solutions provider, Manhattan Associates, Inc., announced the availability of a stand-alone Demand Forecasting component of its Integrated Planning Solutions. Demand Forecasting uses techniques such as demand cleansing, seasonal profiling and exceptions management to smooth out anomalies in demand history in order to create more accurate forecasts. It enables businesses to plan proactively for their customers needs, increase efficiency, reduce inventory levels, decrease stock outs and satisfy customers.

In a February 17 report by ARC Advisory Group, Simon Bragg and Clint Reiser wrote, Manhattans new demand forecasting module is another step forward in the companys expansion from WMS supplier to SCM solution provider. Manhattan has researched, in depth, high volume retail/wholesale requirements, and developed a distinctive forecasting solution. The Advanced Exception Management filtering is especially impressive, and delivers additional value from the integration with Manhattans planning and replenishment tools. This is distinctive, intuitive and a key reason to purchase.

Manhattan Associates Demand Forecasting solution offers key business value in its flexibility and in its integration to planning and replenishment applications, including Manhattan Associates Advanced Planning and Replenishment solutions. The agile solution uses automated processes to analyse past sales data and generate forecasts at the product and location levels.

Purpose-built demand cleansing helps optimise demand history by smoothing large volumes of historical data. This cleansing removes promotional activities, entry errors, mark downs, weather and outside events that can cause out-of-the ordinary spikes or dips in sales patterns, which can be misleading when forecasting. In conjunction with demand cleansing, seasonal profiling identifies trends and evaluates seasonality. It can compare annual seasonal curves, assign weight to certain years and analyse other considerations to recommend seasonal profiles based on business-defined policies. By providing a true picture of demand variability, seasonal profiling helps improves forecast accuracy.

The supply chain is increasingly driven by demand. Companies with quality forecasting processes will have stronger order fulfilment, higher margins and shorter cash-to-cash cycles than their competitors, said Eddie Capel, senior vice president of product management and customer relations at Manhattan Associates (pictured). Increasing inventory to meet possible demand is a method fraught with inefficiencies and costs - but not having an item when a customer wants it invites lost revenue. Manhattan Associates Demand Forecasting solution helps customers find the right balance. Companies can better anticipate demand, helping them satisfy customers and build revenue.

Advanced Exception Management improves productivity by automatically detecting and self-correcting forecast issues and freeing up valuable user time. It employs user-defined exclusion rules, business-specific filtering and rules-based alerts and exceptions. Users can create sets of exclusion rules that meet their business criteria and preferences and assign them to forecast exception policies such as annual demand forecast, current demand forecast, forecast variance, average purchase price, status and velocity.