7 Signs You May be Ready to Extend your ERP with a Demand Planning System

If your company has made a significant investment in an ERP system, but the demand planning portion of it is either lackluster or non-existent, you’re not alone. ERP systems mainly focus on providing accounting value, and only go so far when it comes to inventory forecasting and replenishment capabilities. And in these uncertain times, full of pandemics, geopolitical unrest and unprecedented climatic events, a system that only goes so far is not going to cut it.

While investing in a demand planning system as an adjunct to your ERP system will require investment, the potential benefits are worth it. Industry experts indicate that the payback for the total cost and effort of implementing this type of inventory management software is often achieved in just a few months. In fact, reductions in inventory value of more than 35% have been achieved over the course of just a few months, while customer service levels increased at the same time. The bottom line is that purchasing a demand planning system is a sound way to both extend your ERP system’s capabilities and protect the software investment at the same time.

Here are 7 signs you may be ready to extend your ERP System with a Demand Planning system:

1. While there’s too much inventory, you still experience stockouts of key items.

2. Your inventory levels are too high, yet you still struggle to identify the over-stocked items.

3. Reviewing items for replenishment takes too many hours.

4. Identifying appropriate replenishment quantities for spoke items takes too much time.

5. Vendor price breaks and vendor targets that make the most sense for your situation are not being factored in to purchase recommendations made by your system.

6. You are manually managing sporadic, erratic, and slow-moving items.

7. Your system continues to use the same forecast – even after you’ve over-consumed it!

By integrating directly into your system, the Absolute Value Demand Planning solution can extend your ERP investment and upgrade your demand planning capabilities. The system synchronizes key data between the Demand Planning software and your ERP system to ensure that the most current information available is being used for the planning decisions.

By providing data in an intuitive buyer’s workbench format, Demand Planning puts everything you need to make inventory-related decisions right at your fingertips. The result: forecasting and replenishment recommendations (in the form of purchase orders and transfer orders) are then pushed back to your ERP system for execution – giving you a rational, logical process for staying on top of your fill rates, providing you greater visibility, improving customer relationships, freeing up cash, as well as time to talk with customers, and generally making the handling of your inventory a smoother, smarter process.

If you’d like more information, or to schedule a demo, let us know!