Some time ago I was taking part in an online discussion panel about Forecasting and Demand Planning

As part of the discussion we were asked to name our favourite forecasting/ demand planning tool. The other members of the panel reeled off various systems, one said excel.

And when it came to my turn to answer I said.......

The telephone.

Why?

Because I believed, and still believe today, that in most businesses greater improvement to the demand plan will be achieved by communication ( with sales and with customers) than by any amount of tweaking the forecast algorithm or selecting some different, more complex algorithm.

All algorithms and forecasting methods can only ever predict the future based on the past and yet in most markets the future will never be the same as the past.

So at veloc-planning.com when we came to add our demand planning module we spent much more time and effort enabling the user to add future events.

We call it Simple Forecasting and it is just that. No multitude of complex algorithms, no spending hours playing around with different forecasting methods. The tool presents you with a simple linear regression forecast based on history, you can choose to add degrees of seasonality and to weight different periods of history.

The emphasis, though, is then on collaboratively adding future events and changes via a simple, interactive screen.

It's called Simple Forecasting and it's that simple. For sure theres functionality such as groupings etc. but the emphasis is on simplicity. We believe that using the tool you can get 99% of the way to the best forecast possible.

And then you can focus your efforts on good quality planning to achieve the demand plan in the optimal way.

And spend more time doing things like walking in the hills of Sardinia like Poppy here.....

For more information on our approach to Supply Chain Planning and Forecasting/ Demand Planning use the contact form.

Read more about Simple Forecasting HERE