The largest contributor to working capital and improved net income is operations/supply-chain cost reduction, and the foundation of the supply chain is the demand forecast.  Improving a company forecast has immediate and dramatic impact on reduced operations cost. 

Forecast Management done right leads to Supply Chain Success. Improving company forecast accuracy by 10 to 20% can save millions of dollars in the first year.  eChain can show you where and how much your forecast can reasonably be improved, and can implement forecast improvement measure that can provide you immediate value.  If you need a best-in-class forecasting application to accomplish improved demand forecast, we recommend and support i2 Demand Management.

We can help you with improved forecasting models and model selection, collaborative planning, sales and operations planning (S&OP), and alternative forecasting approaches (regression, delphi, aggregation and top-down/bottom-up forecasting)

Spreadsheet programs are well equipped to handle simple tasks, the user interface is easy and they meet most basic needs. However, most companies that rely on spreadsheet programs for their supply chain management needs are unaware that there are better alternatives- affordable inventory planning solutions that provide strategic value, improve visibility to the supply chain management process and propel company growth. eChain Technology demand planning Services and i2 Technology opens up a whole new world for supply chain management - better demand planning, improved inventory planning and, ultimately, increased efficiency and profits.

The importance of effective demand management is best reflected by the value it delivers. Companies that have focused their efforts on understanding and managing demand are proven to have significantly reduced supply chain costs, better supply chain responsiveness, and higher revenue and profit than their competitors. With improved inventory planning, you achieve that balance between inventory investment and optimal customer service levels- leading to efficient supply chain management and enhanced profitability.

i2 Demand Management consists of i2 Demand Planner (DP), Demand Manager (DM). i2 Demand Planner, part of the i2 Supply Chain Management solution, delivers a powerful planning and forecasting tool-enabling enterprises to understand, anticipate and manage customer demand across their value chain. It optimizes collaboration, collection and rationalization of multiple forecasting inputs through a web-based userfriendly interface combined with industry-leading statistical techniques and unlimited causal factors. Multidimensional data representation supports demand-planning analysis. With i2 Demand Planner, companies can accurately model their business and increase timely internal and external communication with value chain partners - speeding time-to-market and increasing customer satisfaction.

The i2 solution: i2 Demand Manager

With this new focus on demand, the process of demand management has evolved beyond just the periodic generation of a—frequently inaccurate—demand forecast. i2 Demand Manager provides a continuous and tightly integrated process that not only gives organizations the ability to better predict demand but to also understand, communicate, shape, sense, and quickly respond to consumer demand. Some examples of this solution in action include providing visibility into consumer demand to the supplier level, understanding demand predictability to drive optimal inventory levels, or monitoring a new product’s consumer sales in real time so that product can be quickly repositioned to where it is selling the most or plans can be readjusted to meet unexpectedly high demand.

i2 Demand Manager has been created using i2’s experience from helping hundreds of market-leading companies build a best-practice process and software solution for managing consumer demand.

Key capabilities of i2 Demand Manager can include:

• Graphically-designed customized workflows that enable vendor-managed inventory, new product planning, and demand behavior segments that can then be easily integrated in a single, cohesive process
• Promotions management including “what-if” scenarios, automatic determination of optimal promotion scenario, and a patent-pending demand decomposition approach to determine true promotional lift
• Continuous monitoring of leading indicators, competitive activity, consumer sales, supply availability, and plan performance to trigger plan revisions, revise fulfillment strategies, and launch tactical demand-shaping

Benefits of i2 Demand Manager can include:

• Higher revenue and profit margins
• Reduced inventory levels
• Increased service-level performance and customer satisfaction
• Improved product availability while reducing carrying costs, risks, and cash-to-cash cycles
• Improved ability to understand demand behavior and predictability to develop lean manufacturing and proactive risk management strategies
• Improved forecast accuracy
• More effective promotions and new product launches
• Faster response to changes in the demand signal