The Orderly Forecast Management application captures demand from franchise store groups to ensure a reduction in supply chain waste.

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Promotional forecasting is complex. The potential for a catastrophic domino-effect of challenges across the supply chain — from ordering raw material and packaging, through to managing stock levels at depots and at individual stores — makes some ask the question “why on earth would food and beverage enterprises run promotions anyway?”

Of course, the answer is to maximise sales through the mix of products sold — but it can create a real strain on planning for the supply chain department.

As described in the Supply Chain Times: Promotional volume uplifts can be affected by many factors and calculations with many complex variables, which makes forecasting volumes for retail promotions a complicated undertaking. With anything from the type and position of the promotion; what else is on promotion at the same time; time of year; and external influences (sporting occasions, weather & season; even TV advertising) all playing a role, predicting volumes in advance is a huge challenge.

As a general rule, these fluctuating volumes present huge issues inside the supply network. Suppliers at all tiers need to deliver more, warehouses need to support the I/O model, and more stock should be assigned to stores in advance (so they don’t quickly run out), which in turn means many stores need to find more space on the rack to put the stock. Additionally, the issue is compounded for fresh items with short shelf lives — you can’t just hoard fresh stock as it will expire.

So, how can we solve these problems?

In the short-term, retail and hospitality supply chain leaders can work with IT to make better use of data that already exists. You should have this data in your inventory management tool. Start by using the information that exists. Next, look at improving the quality of this information by using the best tool possible.

Secondly, it is important to look at ongoing promotions. What is happening in stores? How are sales levels? How are stock levels? Be proactive and establish channels with store networks, IT and suppliers. Make sure your data reviews enable you to spot problems in advance.

Regarding communication channels with your store networks - you can share the pressure with them. Even with the best modelling systems in the world, it is important to encourage responsible ordering for promotional forecasting; be that with the store manager, district manager or even store licensee head office.

Tools exist to ‘crowdsource’ these forecasts and then contain ordering around that forecast to ease upstream issues.

Orderly Forecast Management

The Orderly Forecast Management application captures demand from franchise store groups to ensure a reduction in supply chain waste.

Streamlining forecast capture for food and beverage campaigns, the application feeds all users tasks and clearly highlights the next steps needed to bring a site from idea to sign-off. No more manual processes are rekeying data, much more speed and simplicity.

The solution replaces the dated, manual spreadsheet driven process, saving you time, giving you better visibility and control of applications and their statuses.

• Complex campaign creation
• Store grouping
• Approval workflows
• Deadlines / submission management
• Bulk upload
• Document libraries

Orderly Forecast Management integrates with Orderly Management so demand can be converted to orders. These are capped against the forecast and released across the lifecycle of the campaign based on the requirements of the customer.

With Orderly, planning and replenishment teams are now invoicing with more accuracy and timeliness, with no need to write off stock (reducing waste and increasing responsibility), due to the tool enabling them to move the responsibility to licensees.