Forecasting

One Network’s Intelligent Demand forecasting service employs a groundbreaking approach that can only be found in the Real Time Value Network™. It has been proven to deliver industry-leading forecast accuracy and award-winning in-stock levels while eliminating forecast bias and reducing inventories to near theoretical minimums.

Furthermore, it minimizes information lead times within supply networks and enables all trading partners to share a “single version of truth” in real time. It is a simple, yet elegant approach that has driven incredible results for One Network customers.

The service achieves this by forecasting shelf off-take at the SKU/Store/Day level and automatically calculating time-phased replenishment requirements for all participants in the supply network—including retailers, brand owners, manufacturers, and logistics providers.

These time-phased order requirements are based on physical lead times, target inventories, and target service levels at each node. Furthermore, One Network’s patented “Continuous Forecast Management” algorithm makes automatic short-term adjustments to consumption point forecasts in near real-time in response to systemic changes to demand.

Today’s supply chains are dysfunctional. Each trading partner typically creates its own forecast based on stale data (e.g. what was shipped or sold in the past), and at best they adjust their operational forecast monthly or weekly.

This approach is undesirable for several reasons: first, shipment data is not an accurate representation of consumer demand given that it is distorted by inventory in the supply network and by lead times (both physical and informational); second, manual processes and system delays enter each successive upstream forecast, guaranteeing increasingly stale demand and inaccurate forecasts; finally, multiple and conflicting forecasts make coordination and collaboration among trading partners manually intensive.

What is the result of this dysfunction? Poor service levels and high inventory levels. It’s the classic “bull-whip effect” problem that supply chain management has spent decades trying to solve without success. Until now.

• >20% increased forecast accuracy (Item/DC Level)
• 80% of forecast bias eliminated
• >98% store in-stock
• 27% Reduction in inventories

• Highly accurate: A single demand forecast at the point of consumption is computed into time-phased order requirements for all trading partners in the supply network
• Real time decision-making: Continuous Forecast Management makes automatic short-term adjustments to the consumption level forecasts during your execution window based on differences between the forecast and what the end consumer is actually buying
• Granular: Manage at the store/day/SKU level
• Simple: Delivered via single cloud-based system accessible with a web browser and synchronized to you and your trading partners’ enterprise management systems
• Proven benefits: Award-winning service levels and dramatic reductions in inventory across the supply network