Optimiza Demand Planner or ODP is an advanced demand planning application. It is designed to allow an organisation to build and maintain an accurate demand forecast within their business. The tool is designed to give demand planners an early and accurate view of future sales plans, booked orders and demand forecasts, allowing rapid and effective decision-making.
 

Companies can typically expect a 15-20% improvement in forecast accuracy. Research has shown that this typically results in:

• On average 15% less inventory
• 17% improvement in perfect order performance
• A 35% shorter cash-to-cash cycle

The impact on a company's financials is significant, with few other planning initiatives being able to yield equivalent returns.   
 Simple item level forecasting can satisfy many businesses, but with ever-increasing complexity being introduced by shorter product life cycles, every expanding regional and global customer bases and an explosion of new product variations and alternative brands, advanced demand management becomes a necessity.

Demand Planning for ever increasing complexities! 

In addition, the way we do business is also changing. Manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers need to constantly collaborate with their suppliers to ensure they are synchronised with demand variations caused by promotional plans and new product introductions. Hence, the need for an accurate and up-to-date demand forecast is greater than ever and the challenge companies face is to design an effective multi-dimensional model for your business that handles this complexity but is still easy to understand, operate and maintain. Optimiza Demand Planner has been designed to meet these requirements.
 

Functionality

ODP uses multi-level forecasting techniques that dynamically calculate seasonality and trends, intelligently selecting the right algorithm for each product level and aggregating or disaggregating the results up or down the product, geographical and / or channel hierarchy.

ODP allows the user to incorporate causal factors such as ‘Hours of Sunlight’ or ‘mm of rain’ when generating the forecasting.

ODP has a highly effective forecast accuracy and alerts function that ensures that focus is directed to the areas that will make the biggest difference to the business. 

• Marketing can view and manage the forecast by channel
• Sales can manage and view the forecast and budget by account manager
• Finance can manage and view the forecast by cost and revenue
• Production can manage and view the forecast by units and volume
• Logistics can manage and view the forecast by inventory type