Introducing ThroughPut Demand Sensing: Your Toolkit for a Resilient & Agile Supply Chain

January 29, 2021 · 4 minutes
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When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

How familiar does this sound?

Little did we know that this would become a harsh reality by the end of this decade! Well, the world isn’t the same as we left it last January in 2020. 

eBay banned its listings of essentials like masks, sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes after a price run-up, a shocking $138 for a bottle of Purell. 

Similarly, Amazon came down hard on its third-party sellers for price slashing, even as one vendor was left stockpiling over 17,000 bottles of sanitizer. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented supply vs. demand shocks across our supply chains. Yes, no industry, no geography, no market is spared. The shock has shaken up age-old demand patterns and has amplified uncertainty and volatility across sectors.

This is truly a stress test for Demand Management Processes. None of our existing demand systems were prepared for the unpredictable pandemic demand patterns and has thrown the economy right on its toes.

As the pandemic enters into its second year, global leaders struggle to ensure adequate distribution across markets. Supply Chain leaders are still looking for a holistic match between production demand trends. 

With limited resources, operations managers are still trying to stitch in people, process, and data silos scattered across the value chain. 

One thing is certain – The only way organizations can wade through these uncertain times is with accurate and robust demand planning. Traditional Demand Forecasting may not consider “real-time” data and events that affect actual customer demand. This is possible with “Demand Sensing.” 

Introducing ThroughPut Demand Sensing Module – Plan & Forecast with Real-time Intelligence

The ThroughPut Demand Sensing Module is your data-driven, go-to planning and forecasting tool to accurately analyze and correlate demand insights and respond to fluctuating margins and inventory needs. 

Demand Sensing is the first step of putting your end-to-end supply chain on autopilot. We hope this new module will ensure that customers never miss out on customer demand again due to operational constraints.

Ali Raza, Founder & CEO, ThroughPut Inc

Getting Organizations Closer to Near Future Demand Patterns 

With the ThroughPut Demand Sensing Module, you can now easily predict near-future demand patterns to streamline the flow of materials, processes, output, and free cash flow across your integrated supply chain. 

  • Rapidly analyze & correlate demand-based insights in an easily digestible format.
  • Improve the overall product mix and service availability and enhance revenue margins.
  • Accurately forecast and respond to fluctuating margins and inventory needs.  
  • Identify & expose patterns across past events and quickly predict demand trends.

Empowering Supply Chain Demand Planners With Business-Critical Intelligence

As we enter the post-covid era, demand planning has now become a critical function that forms the foundation of business-critical intelligence for the entire organization.

This means it would need equal participation by various stakeholders as it impacts profit margins, revenue streams, capital flow, and resource allocation. The Demand Sensing Module addresses this collaborative need through its salient features: 

1. Connect the Dots Between Past, Present, and Future

The Demand Sensing Module uses historical product/service sales data to draw up a time-series pattern and analyze the short-term trends. It also takes into account external events, holidays and promotions to accurately identify, predict and measure future demand patterns to enhance product-mix, service availability and boost revenue margins.

Business Outcome: Accurate demand sensing eliminates time-consuming manual efforts and streamlines operational priorities. 

2. Confidently Work with a 360 Degree View of your Demand Plans

Demand planners need a holistic approach using data right from a granular level to a panoramic view to take informed product-mix decisions. With the Demand Sensing Module, you have this data at your fingertips.

Business Outcome: A multi-dimensional view drives accurate data-driven decisions from the ground-up, enabling better productivity and collaboration. 

3. Group Sellable Products Based on Logical Segmentation

An ABC/ XYZ Segmentation of sellable products or services based on grouping, geo-location, product-mix helps you to quickly optimize your product mix by better understanding top and low performing SKUs.

Business Outcome: A ready to plug and play segment-wise analysis of your product mix across locations, product groups and SKUs. 

4. Extract Demand Summary and Augmentation Views Across Variables

The Demand Sensing Module provides a cross-sectional summary view including Throughput, Lost Sales, OTIF/demand trends. You can also load and test additional regressors against demand across holidays, promotion events, weather changes, etc.

Business Outcome: Deep-dive across variables that could affect demand forecasts while taking into account possibilities of variations based on market trends. 

5. Track Shifts in Market Sentiments and customer Behavior with Accuracy

The Demand Sensing Module helps generate forecast plans, recommend inventory levels and operations plans that match the market sentiments at a given point in time. It also keeps the operations costs under control.

Business Outcome: Make sure your products are optimally stocked irrespective of erratic shifts in market behaviors and patterns. 

6. Eliminate Operational Waste by Calculating Procurement vs. Wastage

The Demand Sensing Module considers external influences, including economic, geographical, and climatic consequences. You can, therefore, accurately quantify your input vs. output without incurring wastage. 

Business Outcome: Understand how to realign the supply source to avoid unnecessary waste can give you a competitive edge. 

To learn more about ThroughPut Demand Sensing, schedule a demo here.

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Anita Raj
Vice President of Product Marketing