Oracle demand planning with Demantra

When selling and/or producing goods creating operational forecasts for replenishment can be a complex task. Some products will be fast movers others will be slow movers, some products will be promoted during a certain period of time and some will be under the influence of weather, season or the geographical region in which they are being sold. Taking these, and even more, factors into consideration you will get a multi-dimensional model which you have to maintain and feed with new and accurate data.

One of the key factors of a demand planning model is to keep it running with the latest data of your company so the model can detect new trends upon old trends and come with accurate predictions to help you plan your day to day business. To create such models and keep the new data coming in Oracle has a rich set of demand planning models for you to use, seasonal, nonseasonal, and moving-average forecasting models. All those models will be filled with your company data from Oracle E-Business suite so you do not have to worry about filling a separate data warehouse for you forecast models.

A story by David Baum in Oracle Profit magazine is explaining how this is done by “Jack Of All Games”.

“Jack of All Games (JOAG), the largest video game distributor in the United States, reports success with its vendor-managed inventory (VMI) program. The VMI program came about after JOAG completed an intensive business intelligence initiative that involved collecting point-of-sale data from thousands of stores and analyzing data on which titles customers were buying. JOAG then approached retailers with the opportunity to share this information.

Eric Clark, vice president of business systems and technology at JOAG, says, "Retailers want us to keep their shelves filled, so our challenge is to determine the optimum quantity of each title based on the demand trends, local demographics, and a number of other constantly fluctuating variables."

JOAG recently installed Oracle's Demantra Demand Management, a software package that allows warehouse managers to sense demand in real time by capturing point-of-sale information from retailers. JOAG runs the information through Demantra's analytical engine and develops a fulfillment strategy for replenishing its retailers' stock. “

Oracle has acquired Demantra, a leading global provider of demand-driven planning solutions.

Demantra is a best-in-class provider of demand management, sales and operations planning, and trade promotions management solutions. With this acquisition, Oracle plans to offer customers a compelling, comprehensive solution for the extended enterprise that enhances demand visibility with powerful analytics for more accurate demand-driven planning, forecasting, and modeling. With Demantra's proven demand chain solutions, and Oracle's leading technology infrastructure and existing ERP and supply chain applications, we plan to provide a seamless solution for the lean enterprise.