NetSuite Demand Planning
What is NetSuite Demand Planning?
NetSuite's innovative demand planning module is designed specifically to provide users with the ability to predict required inventory based on historical demand or sales forecasts. This tool offers the right balance of functionality and ease-of-use to help companies manage inventory more efficiently.
A key feature of NetSuite Demand Planning is the ability to easily define multiple inventory locations with real-time visibility. Locations can be organized hierarchically (for global businesses the country can be defined) and can be set up automatically to create transfer orders between locations if needed.
Additional benefits of Demand Planning include the ability to optimize inventory levels, increase turns, reduce costs with order consolidation, simplify the ordering process, and workflow approvals.
Demand Planning Process
Demand can be evaluated and presented in several ways using the Demand Planning Process. The menu structure is laid out to show the process for calculating demand, reviewing the demand plans and editing where required, generating the supply plans, reviewing, then generating planned Purchase Orders, Transfer Orders, and Work Orders.
Planning methods that are available to users include:
- Linear Regression - use a previous demand to project future inventory based on the ordinary- least-square regression method.
- Moving Average - use the moving average of historical demand to calculate the overall average stock level needed, and project future stock levels using that overall average.
- Seasonal Average - use previous demand to examine the seasonal trend of inventory flow, and project a similar seasonal trend for future stock levels.
- Sales Forecast - use forward-looking sales forecast data (such as opportunities, estimates, etc.) to project inventory demand when using NetSuite for your sales operations.
Supply plans can be generated by using the item settings from the demand plans with just a click, reducing time-consuming manual processes. Depending on parameters and approval workflows, the system will either generate planned, firm, or released orders. NetSuite can also generate planning messages to assist the user in making the right decisions and optimize inventory levels where appropriate.
Gross Requirements Inquiry provides an overview of the progressive supply and demand cycle by listing quantities required and quantities supplied on each transaction date listed, along with the more-on-hand or less-on-hand quantity of the transaction, and the resulting total quantity on hand for the item.
The Planning Process simplifies the practice of creating purchase orders, transfer orders, and work orders. Users can be notified in several ways (reminders, email alerts, saved searches, scheduled reports) when something needs to be done.
To respond to supply shortages (or VIP customers) users can review all sources of supply and order allocations to ensure that high priority sales orders ship complete and on time. And to minimize the effect on all orders, the system provides intelligent supply reallocations recommendations designed to take the resources from multiple unallocated orders and fulfill priority orders first. This helps to reduce the time to find, review, and execute reallocations. If the recommendation is accepted, the system automatically re-aligns the supplies to the affected orders.
MindStream Analytics is a NetSuite preferred implementation partner that has worked with over 100 clients of various sizes and industries, utilizing our "Quick Wins" approach. Our success is built on long-term trusted relationships because we emphasize value, integrity, transparency, and communication.
Our team of consultants offers functional and technical knowledge and expertise in performance management and analytics solutions including planning, budgeting, and forecasting; cloud migration; application customization ( PBCS NetSuite Premium Edition); and follow-the-sun application support with our award-winning AppCare Managed Services .
AppCare acts as an extension of your team. We use our experience in overseeing applications, supporting users, driving end-user adoption, and administering application extensions to provide you with key insights and recommendations that are unique to your needs and goals. AppCare can maximize the value of your IT organization by letting your staff focus on high-value activities while MindStream experts maintain your software.
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