Demand Planning Software - Seven Challenges Demand Planners Face

 The most stubborn and expensive issue business leaders face is related to demand planning. 

Demand planners who rely on poorly researched demand planning disappoint customers, bleed profits, and lose market share to more efficient and tuned-in competitors.  

Gut instincts and spreadsheets cannot understand the sheer scale and complexity of the supply chain management operations. That is why, in order to thrive in this competitive market, industry leaders use technologically backed demand planning software to get consistently more accurate results. 

So, how can you meet these demand planning challenges and improve your profits and future sales? 

Before finding the solution to these challenges, we need to address them first. Let’s find out more about the challenges the demand planners face during the planning process: 

1. Gathering Information from Across Different Departments 

Creating a demand plan means gathering information across all the different departments in your business, which includes activities like sales reports or promotion information. So, what’s the problem? Most of these departments do not have a dedicated interest in providing you with comprehensive information reports on time. This activity takes time and adds extra pressure on your already delayed process. 

2. Making Sense of Contrasting Data 

Collecting information from various multidisciplinary departments in your organization means managing spreadsheets. Lots of differently formatted spreadsheets. How can you figure out what kinds of specific changes were made to the process if someone has already forgotten to update it in the spreadsheet? That’s why data automation with the help of demand planning tools is very crucial for your business. 

3. Creating the Demand Plan  

Once you have diligently gathered as much data as you can, you upload it into your demand planning systems and create your own demand plan. But once again – something just doesn’t feel right. Once you work up your magic, it feels like the problem is still unresolved. Department data and historical data manually updated in the spreadsheet are helpful at some point, but it's only giving you a two-dimensional forecast. If only your well-experienced demand planning skills were powered by real-time data and essential demand indicators to create an updated comprehensive forecast. 

4. Enabling Teams to Implement the Demand Plan  

Your demand plan is finally approved. Awesome! Once your demand plan is implemented, it will generate impressive results, right? We wish it could have been that simple. But as it turns out, the supply chain team from your organization didn’t even implement your plan because they were not able to see or understand any of the assumptions you put into it. Sooner or later, because of the lack of implementation, your business ends up with overstocked or understocked inventory. This is where you need a suitable demand planning tool to help you thrive. 

5. Getting Blamed for Unsatisfactory Forecasting Accuracy 

After overcoming all the silos-related hurdles and dealing with numerous technical delays, your management is still unsatisfied with your demand planning methods. And the worst part is you get all the blame for poor on-shelf availability or excess inventory. 

Whenever you raise an issue with the management, all you hear from them is their instance on results, not problems. As you have unquestionably realized, dealing with these challenges that you face on a day-to-day basis is going to take more than an agile methodology and a whiteboard cover. 

6. A Fragmented Approach to Demand Planning  

The digital transformation over the past few years has enabled customers to use various omnichannel platforms for their shopping needs. Be it your bricks and mortar store or the e-commerce websites, in this scenario, you cannot predict accurately on what platform the order will be placed by customers. This ultimately leaves you with overstocking at one inventory location and understocking at another. If your demand forecasting is backed with state-of-the-art and automated demand planning software, then you won't have to worry about what platform the customer is going to use for their order purchase. 

7. The Dynamic Nature of Your Business 

The only consistent thing in your business is its inconsistency. Its ever-changing format makes it difficult sometimes to create an accurate demand planning method. 

There is a host of factors that affects the demand planning process, like changing trends, customer behaviors, industry standards, and constantly evolving competitors' strategy. To deal with such problems, you need an automated dashboard to help you with all your demand planning requirements. 

Fortunately, There’s a Solution  

One efficient way to find a solution to this problem is to connect, with an expert data professional who can help you understand the complexity hidden in big data, such as market trends and performance. This better understanding will eventually help you make better decisions through actionable insights for reducing costs, increasing margins, and enhancing the overall quality of the product. 

A more actionable and long-term solution is to employ demand forecasting software. TransImpact’s demand planning software is empowered with 250+ algorithms to create demand forecasting for as far as 60 months into the future. Over and above that, it blends your business with effective resource planning and business intelligence tool to strengthen your business.