Category: Demand planning

There’s a reason Excel is the go-to forecasting tool for countless brands and merchants. It’s flexible, affordable, and you already know how to use it.

The ecommerce world is changing faster than you can say “unified omnichannel experience." 

Customers demand better visibility, stronger brand values, and compliance with key sustainability practices. Yet inventory stockouts and supply chain setbacks are still a regular (and expensive) challenge for modern retailers.

To scale successfully, brands need lean, agile inventory planning systems that can adapt to any demand fluctuation, market phenomenon, or natural disaster.

In this article, we’ve rounded up some of the top ecommerce trends that could have...

If the rapid growth of the e-commerce industry has taught us anything, it’s that consumer demand can fluctuate wildly for even the simplest of reasons, throwing off your inventory forecasting.

Before Covid-19 upended society, the direct-to-consumer (DTC) market was experiencing a period of significant momentum. The number of brands launching in the space multiplied daily, as the lucrativeness of high-profit margins inspired new entrants. Interest from consumers was at an all-time high as they sought to take advantage of better pricing and product quality. 

How many units of your top-selling product are you going to sell tomorrow? Next week? What about four months from now? If you’re not 100% sure (and confident) in answering any of these questions, stick around: You’ve come to the right place. 

Sometimes, demand planning and forecasting can feel a bit like you’re supposed to be predicting the future like Nostradamus. You need to account not only for the number of customers who will want to purchase each product in your catalog but also for your suppliers’ timelines, your warehousing space, your...

Seasonality, price fluctuation, and changing economic conditions, oh my!

How would you like to see nearly a three percent increase in annual sales without running a single promotion or introducing a new product?

What do dishwashers, calculators, and chatbots have in common? All are automated solutions to problems that humans use to solve manually. 

How often have you heard someone in your industry say that they’ve considered automating parts of their inventory process, but they don’t trust a program to make the right call?

After all, human eyes will always be better than any demand planning software, right?

Not quite.

Human error is actually reported as a primary contributor to most accidents and disasters occurring across industries. 

In other words, your next inventory-related disaster is far more likely to be caused by a human misreading a spreadsheet or miskeying a number than it is to be...

Would you like to hear a one-word horror story? Stockout. 

Just hearing that word can make retailers shiver—and for good reason. Stockouts can cost your business hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. The good news? These struggles are preventable: Three-quarters of all stockouts are caused by inventory planning issues. 

Imagine your business is an orchestra. Your sales, warehousing, suppliers, and more are all different instruments. Stockouts (and other inventory woes) happen when your departments play in different keys. Your business can only...