SaaS POS Boosts Data Analytics for Small Manufacturers

Small manufacturers, typically unable to afford the cost and manage the scale of a demand signal repository (DSR), are finding new options.

Source: TechTarget.com

“A lot of retailers are offering up data to manufacturers,” said Amy Drevna, senior vice president of marketing at One Network, which provides planning, execution and business-intelligence services on a federated cloud-computing platform. “We try to turn that data into actionable information.”

One Network takes the retailer’s POS data, master data, forecasts and ordering policies (such as order frequency, and whether partial pallets are allowed) and tries to predict orders.

“What that allows us to do is mimic a retailer’s replenishment system,” Drevna said.

One Network has four major grocery chains in its system — Drevna said she can’t identify them — and claims to be able to predict their orders with an accuracy approaching 90%.

Though One Network sounds a lot like a generic DSR, Drevna said it isn’t.

“We are not going to try to replace or go head-to-head with some enterprise-wide DSR,” she said. “They oftentimes contain a lot more information than we need for our purposes.” Instead, One Network can complement and work with a DSR, or be an alternative to one, according to Drevna.