Best Practices: Demand Management

Retailers and consumer goods manufacturers with more complex and extended supply chains, more sophisticated market segmentation, and highly empowered consumers face daunting challenges to elegantly match supply and demand. Yet some manage to accurately forecast demand across millions of item-location combinations, place inventory and reserve logistic capacity at just the right time in just the right place in the supply network, and manage price changes so as to balance supply and demand in each period and location. To uncover demand management best practices, Forrester spoke with leading retail and consumer goods firms and their technology partners. We found best practices in four areas: 1) collaborative planning; 2) transparent allocation and replenishment; 3) demand shaping; and 4) integrated sales, operations, and inventory planning.