Forecasting

Today’s highly competitive economic environment requires a careful balancing of revenue and costs. Inventory and workforce must be "right-sized" to exactly meet demand – too much raises costs, too little decreases revenue. But what is the right size? That depends on an accurate forecast of demand.

True demand
Whether you are a retailer, distributor or manufacturer, true demand starts with what and when a customer actually buys.

Customer demand is inherently local and lumpy, and affects different parts of the supply chain in different ways. As a result, forecast error continues to be a major problem for many companies, from retailers to distributors and manufacturers.

RedPrairie solves this problem by going to the source of customer demand – POS data and in-store inventory – to understand true, local demand, and then applies multi-variable mathematical forecasting algorithms to forecast the impact on your organization. It filters out the noise from floods, snowstorms, supply disruptions or other special events and evaluates the impact of merchandizing plans such as promotions to arrive at a clear picture of real demand at the local level.

The real demand is made visible up and down your supply chain to forecast immediate and long-term requirements for inventory and labor. So whether you are scheduling sales people on the retail floor, pickers in the warehouse, or production workers in the factory, or planning shelf-level inventory, DC shipments, or production quotas, it all starts with an accurate forecast of real demand. This accuracy provides a much better basis for balancing revenue and costs to improve margins and profits.