Infor Simplifies Supply Chain Demand Planning

Infor, a provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, announced the release of Infor Demand Planning version 6.6. The new application features enhanced promotion management, real-time demand sense and respond, advanced shelf life management, and intelligent baseline forecasting. The solution includes intuitive user functions such as the advanced forecast edit grid and automatic calendar interpolation.

Infor says that their new release places a greater emphasis on accuracy and agility to improve the capabilities of supply chain forecasting tools. The solution is equipped with advancements in periodic item forecasting and intelligent baseline forecasting, helping to greatly reduce the manual planning effort and smooth the impact of one-off events and sporadic demand. Periodic item forecasting provides a direct benefit to the user by factoring seasonal changes to decrease planning time and provide precise statistical forecasts.

Some of the key features include:

Data Series Modelling – The application enables user-defined data series modelling, allowing the user to designate the event or time series to be modelled. This helps provide agile and more accurate forecasting to support timelier decision-making. The added functionality prevents users from reacting to non-repeating events and lowers the cost of implementation by reducing customisations.

Periodic Item Forecasting – The software utilises a statistical forecasting approach to estimate the areas where most sales are likely to occur. This creates a significant reduction in planning time and helps optimise predictions. This forecasting approach also helps organisations reduce obsolete stock, as periodic products are not replenished during the off-season.

Intelligent Baseline Forecasting – The solution provides a new facility for managing baseline forecasts to separate statistical and promotional activity. This allows for an automatic reversal of activity surrounding non-repeating sales behavior, which provides an essential component for consumer goods that are impacted by promotional and one-off events.

Promotion Management Workbench – Users can easily define and manage weekly promotion calendars to include trade spend, promo profiles and cannibalisation profiles. The application offers the best picture of promotion activity without requiring full trade planning optimisation (TPO).

Demand Sense and Respond – It is optimised to improve visibility of actual sales behavior, which is aligned through daily, weekly and monthly to date forecasts. The demand sense and respond functionality identifies exceptions and issues an alert to the user when a violation is detected. This enables users to respond to changing market conditions with agility and improve service levels by quickly reacting to real-time demand signals.

Automated Interpolation Vectors – This feature automatically and perpetually learns the daily and/or weekly sales behavior of a product, which the system then applies to forecast changes made at a monthly or weekly level to pro-rate the change to a weekly or daily level respectively.

“Our customers face the growing challenges associated with a constantly shifting supply chain, and the ability to accurately forecast for such changes can have a serious impact on the success of an organisation,” said John Bermudez, Vice President, Product Management, Infor. “Infor Demand Planning 6.6 allows customers to sense the demand and respond, promoting advanced shelf life management and more intelligent baseline forecasting.”