Analytics Demand Planning

Analytics Demand Planning is the demand planning part of the supply chain planning software from Imperia. The company describes its aim as helping businesses reach excellence in the supply chain by improving forecasts, optimising service levels and increasing sales.

Forecasting demand

Imperia says its tool supports the full forecasting cycle in a collaborative environment that users can configure themselves. Forecasts can be built by sales channel, shop or any attribute of the business and displayed by day, week or month. They can take in promotions, prices, seasonality and external variables, and users can plan demand at point of sale to manage inventories efficiently. The company talks of one version of demand, management by exception and intelligent forecasting.

Stock, purchasing and production

Demand analysis feeds stock policies based on ABC, XYZ and frequency classifications, and a dynamic safety stock calculation. On the buying side the tool plans orders around lead times, minimum quantities, logistics limits and supplier conditions, and helps evaluate suppliers. For production it explodes requirements through the bills of materials held in the ERP, covers material requirements planning and master production scheduling, and balances capacity and demand over short, medium and long horizons.

Working in Excel

An early selling point was total integration in Excel, so teams could keep working in the spreadsheet they already use while gaining a better service level and lower costs. Information can come from several sources, including the ERP.

The current platform

Imperia now presents SCP Studio, a supply chain planning platform covering demand, procurement, production and sales and operations planning. Its native AI is meant to adapt to the way a company plans: users describe what they want in natural language and receive new dashboards, custom KPIs and functions. Imperia also compares planning alternatives and their effect on operations, stock and service before decisions are made.