Sales and Operations Forecasting solutions provide a common methodology and collaborative vehicle to generate a single forecast, in volume and values, meeting both the supply chain and financial planning needs as illustrated below.
The solutions are best suited for companies selling products that are driven by a remote sales force, or account managers, or distributors. For such companies, it is of critical importance to capture the changes that may affect product sales in the near term from sources that are closest to the end customer. Not only is it important to have the right products at the right time, it is also critical that they are at the right place. As a result, the forecasts are generally established at ship-to/point-of-sales locations. The main objectives are to reduce short term customer inventory levels, improve distribution efficiency, monitor performance to budgets and assist in determining future realistic sales targets.
FUTURCAST solutions allows management to balance supply side information (in-stock and in-transit inventories, anticipated production volumes, month-to-date sales, backorders, etc.) with the forecast demand signal in order to sign off the forecast with confidence. Moreover, given minimum/maximum order/production quantities, lead times, safety stocks and batch sizes, best what-if replenishment or production quantities can be established to plan production and avoid costly stock-outs. These functions may be performed for items in S&OP groupings that may differ from the sales and marketing families.
