Accurately Forecast With a Collaboration Tool

Your business may be flourishing today, but what about tomorrow? How can you be sure you can keep pace with the constant changes in your marketplace – everything from fierce competition to shifting consumer demands? How can you make more informed business decisions to remain competitive, especially those decisions with long-term consequences? Just as important, how can you optimize inventory levels to reduce costs yet fulfill demand?

You can begin by forging stronger relationships with your vendors and working together on common goals. To do that, you need a collaboration tool that can help you and your suppliers more accurately forecast future order demand, a forecast that ensures you have the right merchandise in the right locations at the right time.

That tool is Teradata® Time Phased Replenishment for Demand Chain Management (DCM), a new and better way to accurately order and communicate with vendors.

Make Better Decisions

Any decision regarding purchasing inventory rests on an accurate forecast – especially decisions with long-term consequences. Therefore, it is critical to provide your vendors with a time-phased purchasing forecast for both production planning and distribution. These long-range forecasts help planners better prepare for future inventory needs. They also help buyers clearly see the effect on Open To Buy (OTB), a key component in considering the impact of long-range orders on budgets.

The Teradata Time Phased Replenishment for DCM module brings you an array of features and functions for better decision making, including:

• Calculations of long-range order forecasts (for 65 weeks) for every location/SKU that can be shared with a vendor.
• Comprehensive long-range order forecast inquiry for total/vendor for each SKU, with drill downs to region, district or individual stores.
• Time scale viewing options, including quarterly, period (monthly) and weekly breakdowns.
• Display preference options including units/dollars, regular forecast/promotion forecast/total forecast, location level (region, district, etc.), vendor/item/total.
• A summary inquiry of long-range order financial forecasts that lets you integrate information with external budget or OTB systems.
• Export reporting to PDF, Excel, email and XML capabilities for easy communication.
• A detailed inquiry into the calculations leading to the long-range order forecast of a single location/SKU.
• Efficient use of transportation resources through optimal load building – targeting cube percentage, checking weight limits, prioritizing merchandise, and pulling forward merchandise to meet target cube percentages.
• Simulation capabilities that allow you to create “what if” scenarios for a range of locations and SKUs.
   It also accurately reflects changes in logistical and order constraints such as lead times, planned sales days, customer service level targets, min/max shelf, pack size or promotions.

Built-In Benefits

Teradata Time Phased Replenishment for DCM also offers you and your business built-in benefits such as eliminating the need to model non-linear (lumpy) distribution center (DC) demand. Time Phased Replenishment, instead, rolls up forecasted store orders to create the DC synchronized demand. This single version of the true synchronized need is effective for service levels and supports both DC and store orders.

Teradata has built accurate Store Demand Forecasts that respond to each location’s needs as well as reflect the latest trends within the time-phased orders. It’s a method that delivers superior financial results for average inventory, turns, and same store sales. Teradata also uses the time-phased orders to consider changing order strategies and incorporates those changes into future store and warehouse orders. In addition, the orders provide visibility into the stores’ effective inventory:

• Time-phased order forecasts (for 65 weeks)
• Collaboration with vendors
• Simulation capabilities
• Store/DC synchronized demand
• Total retail/vendor inventory optimization
  

Share the Advantages

The Teradata Time Phased Replenishment for DCM module gives you the ability to share vital purchasing forecast information with your suppliers. This pays dividends for everyone. For starters, it means manufacturers have key information for production planning. It also opens the door to total retail inventory and vendor inventory optimization. Vendors will discover their fill rates will improve – and their sales will increase.

You will have the right quantity of products … where and when you need them.

For More Information

To find out more about how the Teradata Demand Chain Management solution and its Time Phased Replenishment module can help you grow a better, more productive business, contact your Teradata representative or visit Teradata.com/dcm.