RazorChain is the new venture of Jonathan Fleck, an expert in supply chain planning, forecasting, modeling, simulation, and optimization. Jonathan gained his hands on experience in supply chain at companies like Reebok, Johns Manville, and Oracle. He also developed his theoretical understanding of the process at MIT where he developed case studies and contributed to papers. This background has allowed Jonathan to pinpoint a potential need in supply chain process – demand forecasting.
Demand forecasting is the art of predicting the quantity of a product consumers will purchase. Looking both forward into the future and backwards at the past, demand forecasting involves rigorous analysis of historical sales data and educated guesses about future trends. Although it has a number of other uses, demand forecasting is particularly important in determining the amount of inventory a business needs.
Estimating demand incorrectly can have a significant impact on both a business’ sales and profitability. If inventory is too low, money is left on the table, if it is too high profitability is impacted or even eliminated.
"Demand forecasting is the sweet spot in better supply chain management", said Jonathan. "Companies spend tens of millions of dollars on enterprise resource planning systems. Yet demand forecasting is the #1 most important input into these systems and demand forecast accuracy is almost never measured or reported to executives."
Pulling current forecasts out spreadsheets and putting them into a software-as-a-service site where best practices, new tools, and better collaboration promise to make the art of demand forecasting more a science.
RazorChain will be completing its web prototype in the next few weeks and looking for beta testers after that time. You can follow Jonathan on Twitter at @jfleck13 and or explore Razorchain at http://www.razorchain.com.
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