Oracle upgrades its demand planning solution

By Bob Trebilcock, Editor at Large -- Modern Materials Handling, 6/25/2007

Oracle is set to announce today the release of its latest demand planning and management solution since the acquisition of Demantra last June.

The purchase and today’s release reflect a shift in the market from optimizing the supply chain to focusing on the needs of the end customer.

 To better predict the products and quantities a company should manufacture and stock, demand planning solutions take information from a variety of market-focused feeds like:

§         point-of-sale information

§         market data and

§         even weather forecasts.

“Companies have already invested a lot of time and money into leaning out their supply chains,” says Jonathan Chorley, Oracle’s vice president of supply chain management and e-business suite product strategy. “Now, they’re looking to understand and manage the demand side of their business to drive their top line growth.”

A shift in strategy

That explains the shift in strategy. Where yesterday’s supply chain applications were focused on becoming as efficient as possible, today, the bigger gain comes from more accurately forecasting customer demand and tying that to optimized supply chain processes. After all, it doesn’t matter how efficient a plant operates or how effectively a distribution center fills orders, if no one wants the products on the shelf.

“With a demand plan, you get a consensus forecast of what you should be producing or purchasing,” says Chorley. “That plan can then interact directly with the supply chain planning suite, and ultimately will be used to generate manufacturing, distribution and shipping plans that are fed back into an ERP system and execution systems.”

The demand-driven planning capabilities in the new release enable companies to sense demand at a granular level, in real-time and closer to the point of consumption. Other attributes of the integration include:

• Preconfigured worksheets for demand analysis and waterfall analysis
• Forecast archiving to preserve the current period’s forecast
• Preconfigured workflows for planner notifications and approval processes
• Access to series, levels and menus based on security settings for groups and users
• A tightly integrated user experience.

“The complexities of today’s global and decentralized business environment have placed increased pressure on companies to align their operations with strategic goals in order to be profitable,” Chorley says. “By integrating the Demantra demand planning solution into Oracle’s Advanced Planning applications, we are giving companies the tools to better predict, shape and respond to demand in order to uphold the operational and strategic goals of their companies.”