{"id":3039,"date":"2015-09-09T13:39:09","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T17:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2015-09-09T13:39:09","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T17:39:09","slug":"are-you-effectively-leveraging-point-of-sale-pos-data-in-your-forecasting-inventory-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/2015\/09\/09\/are-you-effectively-leveraging-point-of-sale-pos-data-in-your-forecasting-inventory-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Effectively Leveraging Point-of-Sale (POS) Data In Your Forecasting & Inventory Management?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we have an explosion of data. It is estimated\u00a0that\u00a02.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day with 90% of the world\u2019s data created in the past 2 years!<\/p>\n

The key question becomes what do we do with all this data? In the past, companies have always struggled with managing and analyzing large sets of data<\/a><\/strong> and could seldom generate any insights.<\/p>\n

However, what\u2019s different today vis-\u00e0-vis five years ago, is that we now have the ability to cleanse, transform and analyze this data to generate actionable insights. Moreover, today\u2019s retail consumers are extremely demanding and want choices on \u201cWhen\u201d, \u201cWhere\u201d and \u201cHow\u201d to purchase product. Whether it is a traditional stand-alone retail store, shop-in-shop, website or mobile app; consumers want the flexibility to research, purchase and return product across multiple channels.<\/p>\n

Today, many retailers and wholesalers have a vast amount of POS data available. However, many of them still don\u2019t use the data at the lowest level of detail in their demand planning<\/a><\/strong> cycle. The result is significant out of stocks and inability of consumer to find product at the stores.<\/p>\n

For a company to be successful in today\u2019s Omni-channel environment, three key steps are needed:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) Use Point-of-Sale (POS) data as a key input into demand plans: POS is the data that is closest to the consumer and is the purest form of demand- it is critical to leverage this data at the right level of detail into a product\u2019s demand plans. Information available at stock-keeping-unit (SKU) level- should be aggregated and disaggregated to ensure that all attributes of a product are factored into the planned forecast.
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2) Link Point-of-Sale (POS) data to your Allocation & Inventory Management Systems: Today\u2019s allocation systems have the ability to read sell-thru at POS and react and replenish based on what product is selling and what is not. It is critical to make sure that these systems are linked together so that the process is automated and seamless. Linking these systems will allow retailers to send the right product to the right store at the right time- thereby maximizing the chances of making a sale. This will not only contribute to top-line, but will also make our inventory investments more productive.<\/p>\n

3) Collaboration with Value Chain Partners to share Point-of-Sale (POS) data: Today\u2019s retail world is complex, many companies have multi-channel operations and work with a number of channel partners to distribute their products. In such a scenario, it is not always easy to gain access to POS data. However, it is important for companies to invest in a CPFR program (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment) that can give them access to downstream POS data which can be used to build better forecasts. It is critical to emphasize a \u201cWin-Win\u201d relationship for both companies and channel partners to bring everyone along on the collaboration journey<\/p>\n

Along with Rene Saroukhanoff, CPF, Senior Director at Levi’s Strauss & Co, we’ll be talking about the above, as well as how to use size forecasting, optimized allocation, and visual analytics at IBF’s Business Planning & Forecasting: Best Practices Conference in Orlando USA, October 18-21, 2015<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0I look forward to hopefully meeting you at the conference! \u00a0Your comments and questions are welcomed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we have an explosion of data. It is estimated\u00a0that\u00a02.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day with 90% of the world\u2019s data created in the past 2 years! The key question becomes what do we do with all this data?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4872,"featured_media":3072,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[277,82,271,60,255,61,263,62,275,41,281,64,65,66,162,34,67,39,68,260,69,70,273,35,42,43,44,279,36,76,248,48,81,251,236,264,284,37,252,73,74,270,258,38,280],"class_list":{"0":"post-3039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-forecasting-and-planning","8":"tag-analytics","9":"tag-apics","10":"tag-apo","11":"tag-best-practices","12":"tag-big-data","13":"tag-business-forecasting","14":"tag-certification","15":"tag-collaborative-forecasting","16":"tag-cpf","17":"tag-data-cleansing","18":"tag-data-mining","19":"tag-demand-forecast","20":"tag-demand-forecasting","21":"tag-demand-management","22":"tag-demand-planner","23":"tag-demand-planning","24":"tag-demand-planning-and-forecasting-conference","25":"tag-economic-forecasting","26":"tag-executive-sop","27":"tag-finance","28":"tag-forecast-accuracy","29":"tag-forecast-error","30":"tag-forecast-value-added","31":"tag-forecasting","32":"tag-forecasting-metrics","33":"tag-forecasting-models","34":"tag-forecasting-system","35":"tag-fundamentals","36":"tag-ibf","37":"tag-ibp","38":"tag-innovation","39":"tag-institute-of-business-forecasting-and-planning","40":"tag-inventory-management","41":"tag-marketing","42":"tag-metrics","43":"tag-new-products","44":"tag-predictive-analytics","45":"tag-sop","46":"tag-sales","47":"tag-sales-operations-planning","48":"tag-sales-forecasting","49":"tag-sap","50":"tag-siop","51":"tag-supply-chain","52":"tag-training"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4872"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demand-planning.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}