The special issue of the Journal of Business Forecasting, Technology in Forecasting & Planning, is now available for download. Download it here.

This special issue is designed to help you make the right investment in forecasting and planning software. It includes articles on how to define your planning software requirements and how to avoid common post-implementation pitfalls, brought to you by experienced planning leaders that have taken the journey you may be embarking on now. It also features excellent commentary on whether Artificial Intelligence should be a decision maker or decision supporter in your organization, and valuable insight into how blockchain will improve demand planning in the years to come.

Underlying all this, we have a revealing interview with Doug Laney, the creator of Infonomics, which reveals the importance of developing a data-centric culture to properly leverage new technology. I am also pleased to say we interviewed Sir Ralf Speth, the CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, who discusses JLR’s journey in Big Data and the IoT. See the full list of articles here.

IBF spoke with Jaguar Land Rover CEO, Sir Ralf Speth, about Big Data and the IoT.

Articles in this special issue:

• Planning Software – The Features You Need, What It Costs & Estimated ROI
• Blockchain – Its Role in Demand and Supply Planning
• Interview With CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, Sir Ralf Speth
• 4 Dangerous Habits That Can Lead to Abandonment of Forecasting & Planning Software
• Shimano North America’s S&OP Technology Journey
• Artificial Intelligence – Decision Maker or Supporter?
• A Primer on Probabilistic Demand Planning
• The Next Generation of Demand Management Technology
• Interview With Doug Laney, Best-Selling Author & Creator of Infonomics
• And more

Become An IBF Member & Get Full Access To The Journal

When you become an IBF member, you get the Journal of Business Forecasting delivered to your door quarterly, as well as up to $100 off all events, access to exclusive members only tutorials and workshops, access to the entire IBF knowledge library, and more. Get your membership.

The Journal of Business Forecasting Winter 2017/2018 Issue is available now for download. Below is a letter from the Editor, Professor Chaman L. Jain, revealing why this issue comes at an especially important time in the evolution of business forecasting, demand planning and analytics.

Dear Professional,

We are living in a world where market dynamics are constantly changing. Markets are exploding with new products, channels of distribution are proliferating, competition is getting more intense, and consumers are less loyal and more demanding. To survive and grow in these markets, companies must adapt, and that is exactly what they are doing. In spite of unprecedented challenges, 2/3 of companies report operating margins and revenue growth of 15% or more. The question is, what tools and methodologies are behind this remarkable growth, and how can they be translated into greater efficiency and profitability?

The answer lies in the fact that innovations like Big Data, Predictive and Cognitive Analytics, Machine Learning, Quick Response Forecasting, and Social Sensing have evolved from the conceptual to the real. Products are now “’self-aware” and Facebook data is being successfully leveraged to predict demand. The advancements we have been talking about for years are being successfully leveraged as drivers of growth. We as demand planners and S&OP professionals are no longer asking ourselves what tools of the future will be, but how we implement those tools today for superior demand planning and forecasting.

In this climate of exciting change, there remain some constants: people, process, and technology. People remain key, not least because automation in our field will, ironically, require more people to enter the field to fill a variety of new job functions. But that is not to say these elements are not evolving; software, not forecasters, will prepare forecasts based on pre-determined criteria, and information will include unstructured data gathered from social media.

Journal of Business Forecasting and Planning

Given the advent of automated forecasting software that models, predicts, advises and learns, demand planners will not be directly involved in preparing forecasts. Soon, the responsibility of demand planners will be to build consensus around forecasts, and then communicate that to upper management for action. They must, however, know what kind of forecasts are needed and how to evaluate them. Data scientists, working under demand planners, will use their skill and technology to gather more insight from data, such as what consumers really want and why, and how they feel about our products. This insight will feed decisions that optimize revenue and profit.

Because of the increasing share of new product sales and the expanding role of e-commerce businesses, new processes must be added to manage demand because they require different approaches and strategies. Further, market dynamics are rapidly changing, and so must our plans. To detect market changes quickly and act on them, planners need to shorten their planning cycles. Strategic planners no longer have the luxury to meet just once a year – they now have to meet more frequently. Furthermore, disruptions in both supply and demand are occurring much more quickly and are costly, requiring yet more and better processes to manage them.

Tools such as data mining, artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and Hadoop will improve market intelligence, which will help in making better decisions. Virtual assistants such as Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and Watson will help in running different scenarios and producing outputs at the click of a button to arrive at an optimal solution. Last year, H&R Block deployed Watson to assist its staff in filing tax returns. The key objectives were to reduce tax liabilities of clients and file the return correctly so that they get the refund as soon as possible. This will help the company to improve its client retention rate. To train Watson, IBM fed 74,000 pages of federal tax codes and thousands of tax-related questions pulled from the H&R Block’s 60 years of tax return data. This technology is remarkable, and is directly transferable to  both demand planning and forecasting.

Since market changes are coming thick and fast, we need to detect market signals early enough to act. Some authors in this issue are already suggesting viable and practical ways to make this happen. To speed up the process of forecasting and, consequently, decision making, Larry Lapide proposes Quick Response Forecasting, and Charles W. Chase proposes Edge Analytics. The technology required to implement these concepts is almost here.

As with all changes, there is opportunity and risk, and hope and trepidation. Yes, technology will eliminate some jobs, but it will create others. An increasingly unavoidable truth is that demand planners and forecasters will transform into data scientists, and that presents an exciting new world of opportunity. We are at a pivotal moment, let’s embrace it.

Happy Forecasting!

Chaman L. Jain, Editor

Featured Articles

1. Event-Driven Planning: An Inflection Point for Operations Planning
By Gregory L. Schlegel

2. Building the Link Between Data and Supply Chain Performance in the Digital Age
By Alan L. Milliken

3. Preparing for Demand Planning in 2025
By Eric Wilson, CPF

4. Digital Transformation: Three Skills Demand Managers Must Have
By Peter Chisambara

5. Quick Response Forecasting: A Blueprint for Faster and More Efficient Planning
By Larry Lapide with Eric Wilson, CPF

6. Real-Time Demand Execution Anticipating Demand at the Edge
By Charles W. Chase, Jr., CPF

7. The Move to Defensive Business Forecasting
By Michael Gilliland

8. Supply Chain Digitalization — Delivering Sustainable Cross-Functional Change
By Neil James

9. I (am) Robot—Future Proofing Your Demand Planning Career
By Andrew Schneider, ACPF

10. CAPEX Predictive Analytics Confirm Renaissance in Animal Spirits
By Evangelos Otto Simos

11. U.S. Economy Defies Conventional Wisdom, Enjoys Non-Inflationary Full Employment Growth
By Jamal Nahavandi

This special issue of the Journal of Business Forecasting is available free for members via the IBF members area. Not a member? Then get a preview of this issue of the journal or become a member today and receive all JBF issues free and a host of other benefits. 

Understanding Just How Revolutionary Omnichannel Really Is

It has changed the way manufacturers sell their products and the way consumers buy them. Manufacturers now sell their products not only to wholesalers, distributors, and retailers but also directly to consumers. Logistics companies now deliver many more packages, mostly small and less bulky, both domestically and internationally.

What’s more, they do it faster than ever before. With these innovations come both challenges and opportunities. It is up to us as demand planners to use the information available in this new paradigm to make our demand planning more effective.

By selling directly to consumers, manufacturers have also become retailers. With that, they bypass the middleman, which raises their profit margins. Just as valuable is access to true consumption data, which greatly improves forecasts and provides a market for products that have already matured in traditional markets.

Omnichannel Means Planners Can Shape Demand Like Never Before

This change also makes it easier for manufacturers to shape the demand, and provides an opportunity to test new products before releasing to brick-and-mortar stores. It even allows for the launch of niche businesses, with Dollar Shave Club and Just for Men being key examples. In short, the data available to us in this new omnichannel world is a potential goldmine. But it’s not all smooth sailing.

There are many challenges that come with omnichannel, too. Among others, it increases the cost of serving consumers. Manufacturers are now in direct competition with their retailer customers. To alleviate that, they distinguish their products by changing packages and configurations. The result? Increased costs.

Transparency Means Lower Costs And A Race To The Bottom

With smartphones and shopping apps, consumers have more visibility of prices on the web and on the shelf. If they find lower prices on a retailer’s or competitor’s website, they want the retailer to match them. Increased transparency makes consumers smarter, and smarter consumers mean tougher business – they want lower prices, they want better quality and they want it faster. Are retailers and manufacturers racing to the bottom, chasing ever smaller profit margins, and if so who will emerge victorious? For now, with the rise in store closings, the odds are stacked against retailers.

Cannibalization is another problem. When a manufacturer starts selling directly to consumers, it cannibalizes its own business base. In seeking higher profit margins by selling direct, they are cutting off their retail clients, unaware of the limitations of this path. As if this wasn’t complicated enough for demand planners and forecasters, omnichannel retail adds to the points of sale, which can reduce the quality of forecasts and increase inventory.

Changes are not going to stop, they will continue apace. Consumer patience is getting thinner and thinner; they want goods now, not hours or days later. Technology is going to improve further, making it easier and quicker to place orders. The ways products are packed and shipped will change, so that consumers can get whatever they want, whenever and wherever they want it.

Analytics Is The Natural Companion To OmniChannel

Big data and predictive analytics will change the way businesses market their products. There will be more and more target marketing, targeting consumers with specific attributes based on demographics, age, and buying habits. This will increase ROI for those who can manipulate their consumer data. This information means we have the power to not just meet demand for existing products, but also test the demand for new products. This is a real gamechanger.

Omnichannel Is Here And It Provides Multidimensional Consumer Journeys

This vision of omnichannel retail is not a fantasy, it is already happening. To succeed, businesses must embrace changes, not resist them. Forward-looking companies are already doing it. Walmart and Kroger are expanding their pick-up services so that consumers don’t have to waste time in finding what they need, nor do they need to wait in line for check-out. Companies like Warby Parker (eye glasses) and Bonobos (men’s clothing)—two of the larger e-commerce-driven retail companies in the United States— are considering building store footprints where consumers can see and touch products before placing an online order. Not to buy instore, but to check size and style before the product is shipped to their home. Combining the digital with the physical creates a new shopping experience—try before you buy and still benefit from the low online prices. Customers get the product at the price they want and companies enhance their brand by providing a multidimensional consumer journey.

Similarly, Amazon Go is going to change the way consumers buy goods. Consumers will walk into a store, use an app to log into their Amazon account, pick up whatever they need, and then walk out without ever going to a check-out counter. Just as the Internet took brands off the street, omnichannel is putting them back, except now it is more affordable for consumers. There are without doubt both challenges and opportunities in the omnichannel sphere – it is time to help position your organization to overcome the former and benefit from the latter.

Journal of Business Forecasting Volume 35 | Issue 4 | Winter 2016-2017

The Journal of Business Forecasting has been providing demand planning, forecasting, supply chain, and S&OP practitioners with jargon-free articles on how to improve the value of their roles and company performance from improved forecasting and planning for over 30 years.

Download a preview of the latest Journal of Business Forecasting.

Click here to join IBF and receive a JBF Complimentary Subscription.

In any organization, two functions that play a key role in generating business are Sales and Marketing, neither of which can do it alone. They need each other’s support, as well as that of Operations. Since each function has different roles and responsibilities and are evaluated on different sets of metrics, their agendas don’t align, which become a source of tension. The key concern of Sales is selling, the metric on which it is evaluated; Marketing, increasing market share, and brand building; and Operations is responsible for improving production efficiency and providing optimal customer service with minimum inventory.

The theme of this special issue of the IBF’s Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF) is to investigate the sources of tension across these functions, and what can be done to create harmony. We asked various practitioners to share with us their experiences. Patrick Bower and Glen Fossella believe that tension is healthy as long as it is managed, because many new ideas result from opposing views. In their experience, tension arises from using different and conflicting metrics, unrealistic expectations, lack of information sharing, and not understanding the language of others. Sales forecasts are ignored in favor of stretched goals, orders are accepted without capacity consideration, packaging is changed without considering its impact on inventory and obsolete expense, and criticism is intended simply for personal or political reasons. Tension can be minimized if we understand the constraints of others, speak their language, and think about the interest of the company as a whole. Even if Sales is willing to cooperate, it may not have full knowledge of customer plans due to different timelines, and/or limited access to people who have relevant information. Marketing would certainly benefit if everything is on the table—what is known and what is not. This will help all functions to understand the risks; and if the plan fails to meet expectations, why?

Mark Lawless believes that tension would be greatly minimized if other functions understand that they would receive immense benefit by cooperating—quid pro quo. Jonathan Boult discusses how his company, Goodyear, built cross-functional collaboration within an organization, as well as with its customers. Building in bonus compensation within KPIs such as forecast accuracy, can also help. He further adds that the idea of collaboration catches on fast, particularly during difficult times. In his company, it occurred when demand was outstripping supply, which created a number of problems including large backlogs and poor customer service.

Charles W. Chase, Jr., and Larry Lapide show how and why cross-functional collaboration can be used to grow, not only revenue but also profit. Kevin Reim shows how Marketing can measure the impact of different types of promotions, which can be used to increase sales and profit. Ed Thompson feels that the solution to relieving tension lies in educating Sales, Marketing, and Operations, defining their roles and responsibilities, and providing access to systems for sharing and analyzing information. Although demand is mainly driven by Sales and Marketing, and forecasting is primarily done by Operations, to reap the full benefits of their efforts, they have to put their own agendas aside, and work together for a common goal. This special issue of the Journal of Business Forecasting shows how.

Chaman L. Jain
Chief Editor, Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF)
St. John’s University
EMAIL: jainc [at] stjohns.edu

Click here to DOWNLOAD a sample copy of this special issue of the Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF)

Click here to become an IBF member and receive a JBF subscription FREE

FEATURED ARTICLES:

The S&OP Tension Convention: Two S&OP Pros Square Off on the Issue of Conflict within the Process
By Patrick Bower and Glen Fossella

The View from the Sales and Marketing Organizations
By Mark J. Lawless

Demand Planning Needs Customer Profitability
By Larry Lapide

How to Get Buy-In to a Demand Planning Process: A Case Study
By Jonathan Boult, CPF

Using Demand Sensing and Shaping to Improve Demand Forecasting
By Charles W. Chase, Jr.

Striking a Balance between Sales and Operations in the Forecasting Process
By Ed Thompson

How to Measure the Impact of Different Marketing Efforts
By Kevin Reim

Emerging Economies Stall Growth in Industrial Countries
By Evangelos Otto Simos, Ph.D.

2014: The Consensus Outlook
By Jack Malehorn

Answers to Your Forecasting Questions
By Chaman L. Jain, St. John’s University

Click here to DOWNLOAD a sample copy of this special issue of the Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF)

Click here to become an IBF member and receive a JBF subscription FREE

Volume 32 Issue 2
Summer 2013

Click here to DOWNLOAD a sample copy of the latest Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF)

Click here to become an IBF member and get a JBF subscription FREE

FEATURED ARTICLES:

“Lean Forecasting: A Competitive Edge”
By John Gallucci

In these highly competitive markets, it is more important than ever to improve efficiency and shrink waste to survive and grow. One important area where waste can be reduced is forecasting, a practice the author calls “Lean Forecasting.” This article describes in detail the wastes that exist in the consensus demand planning process, and suggests tools and ways to get rid of them.

“Leveraging Exceptions and KPIs to Improve the Demand Forecast”
By Alan L. Milliken

Because of rapidly changing market dynamics, exceptions are now part of doing business. To survive and grow in this market, it is important to leverage exceptions; this article outlines a strategy to leverage them. To do that, the author suggests first preparing exception reports by ABC classification, at an account level, by items and category, based on statistical forecasts as well as ones that include overrides by Marketing and Sales, and then taking corrective actions. He discusses in detail which action will be appropriate under what circumstances.

“Is ‘Big Data’ Just More Data?”
By Larry Lapide

This column deals with “Big Data,” one of the latest technology trends being hyped. It discusses what managers need to consider when evaluating whether or not to implement it at their companies. A brief synopsis of a new book introducing the concept of signals versus noise is given, as well as some of the lessons learned from efforts in downstream data—a long-standing “Big Data” industry initiative. The column recommends identifying a few key predictable signals from Big Data to focus on during implementation, and considering the rest of the data to be noise that adds no useful information towards improving decision making.

‘Sales & Operations Planning: Where Is It Going?”
By Tom Wallace

In this highly competitive environment, it is more important than ever to manage businesses efficiently and effectively. S&OP is the process that does just that. The author explains in detail why such a process is needed, and what the future holds. The author also clears up a number of misconceptions about the process including S&OP in real time, when to use Global S&OP, and the role of weekly S&OP. In addition, he covers the powerful impact that S&OP can have when used to support strategy.

“Using Big Data to Enhance Demand-Driven Forecasting and Planning”
By Charles W. Chase, Jr.

Big data is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth, availability, and use of information, both structured and unstructured. Much has been written on the big data trend and how it can serve as the basis for innovation, differentiation, and growth. Companies using real information to sense demand signals and respond quickly to changes in demand can confidently cut inventory, reduce working capital requirements, and free up cash.

“The U.S. Economy…A Glimmer of Hope”
By Jack Malehorn 

“Weak Global Recovery with Changing Uneven Growth Patterns”
By Evangelos Otto Simos

“Answers to Your Forecasting Questions”
By Chaman L. Jain

 Click here to become an IBF member and get a JBF subscription FREE

The Journal of Business Forecasting (JBF) has been providing demand planning, forecasting, supply chain, and S&OP practitioners with jargon-free articles on how to improve the value of their roles and company performance from improved forecasting and planning for over 30 years. A subscription to the JBF comes with IBF membership at no additional cost.