Forecasting and Replenishment Planning: Challenges and Opportunities
Wholesale/distribution and retail industries are undergoing fierce competition because of the internet revolution. Due to the speed of innovation and demanding customer needs on products, supply chain practitioners are getting high pressure to ensure having the right product at the right place at the right time. Wholesale distributors and retailers typically experiences the following supply chain related issues:
- Too much inventory: This takes away a lot of capital and causes high warehouse maintenance and product obsolescence
- Out of stock: This is due to product not available when customer wanted. Thus affecting customer satisfaction
- Loss of sales: Products are becoming more and more commoditized. Without properly stocked inventory, customer will shop elsewhere
- Reduced margin: Vendors sometimes provides volume discount or incentives to move their products. Many wholesale distributors and retailers are either not taking advantage of that or are suboptimal in practice
- Internal transfer: Many companies tend to buy products from vendors while they can actually transfer from other warehouses. This increases overall inventory and cause obsolescence.
Solution
Analytics United Buyer’s Workbench is a cloud solution certified by Oracle and listed in Oracle Cloud Marketplace.
It works with Oracle Solution to cover the following business functions:
- Demand Planning
- Inventory Planning
- Procurement Planning
The solution generates optimized Demand Plan, Inventory plan and Procurement plan specially tailored for the wholesale/distribution and retail industry. It generates procurement plan which meets vendor requirements, optimizes procurement margin, reduces overall inventory yet still achieving high customer service level. It also recommends internal transfers before any outside purchasing would be made
Results
- Improved business bottom line by reducing purchasing cost through investment buy
- Reduced inventory while still meeting customer service level
- Enhanced user productivity by automatically building full truck or container load