How Demand Forecasting Spreadsheet Troubles Your Business?

Even though markets are in good condition, businesses must manage the varying needs for their products. Failing to keep the inventory in check will result in revenue loss. This is because disappointed customers start to buy from competitors. They also have to pay more for overhead.   

It is difficult to control stock levels if one cannot correctly foresee demand. Depending on spreadsheets for predicting demand will result in more time consumption and errors for your business and operations.   

Obstacles while using Spreadsheet for Demand Forecasting   

Spreadsheet works as an excellent, inexpensive tool for organizations in start-up mode to make forecasts. But when Stock Keeping Units crosses 1,000, Spreadsheet's limitations will appear. They prevent it from handling that scale and producing a comprehensive view of the business.  

They don't merge with ERP and sales source systems, and alliances and reliability are critical weaknesses. In short, spreadsheets preclude effective supply chain management and demand planning. Spreadsheets are a human resource induced tool hence automation may not be its scope.  

Reasons to step away from spreadsheets for demand forecasting. 

Data Integrity Issues: Demand forecasting calls for gathering previous sales data from ERP source systems. However, this is a tedious task.  

Understanding data completely is a backbreaking challenge. Separating the Spreadsheet from the data sources will mean more time for consolidation. If anyone manually distorts the data in a spreadsheet, this heightens the chances of human errors.       

Poor Collaboration: The demand forecasting procedure needs financial and functional heads to cooperate with various parts of the firm. This is to provide an exact forecast. Spreadsheets are not for collaboration. They do not support many users with problematic demands.  

As more people use the spreadsheet, there is a greater chance that the data integrity problems mentioned above will happen. Mistakes in the data push of demand forecasting.    

Lack of Version Control: In spreadsheets, one produces, transfers and gathers demand forecasts manually. This results in version control issues.  

Spotting new changes in a Spreadsheet is challenging when it comes to numerous versions. They put extra pressure on the group in charge of demand forecasting. Spreadsheets are easily prone to manipulation as they lack control in restricting access to data.   

Not Scalable: Spreadsheets are unable to scale when a company develops quickly. One needs patience, and proper access controls to reconstruct demand planning and forecasting models.  

One has to prioritize time on analysis in a rapidly-developing business habitat. You cannot manually sustain the demand forecast model itself. It is a fact that Spreadsheets are better to predict demand for a minimum amount of units.  

But they are less efficient to analyze business development plans. They include the latest product launches and regional diversifications. In such cases, the prevailing spreadsheet-based demand forecasting process controls data to make quick decisions.  

Lack of Scenario Analysis: What if a core distributor rapidly runs into unanticipated troubles and declines delivery dates? An active supply chain plan allows one to organize for the unexpected. But that’s impossible when one depends completely on spreadsheets as your chief planning tool.  

A spreadsheet can operate only with minimum evaluation. One needs a large degree of experience for scenario organizing. Any major alteration to the model will need considerable rearrangements that are tedious and are highly vulnerable to error.   

Difficult to Incorporate Historical Data: Using spreadsheets, it is challenging to recover old data from various source systems. Evaluating that information with forecasting ways is also an uphill task. Operating with a huge number of spreadsheets makes it impossible to rearrange the demand forecast models.   

Accurately Forecast Demand with NetSuite

Exact demand forecasting operates more precise downstream demand schemes that improve profitability and make customers gratified. Using NetSuite ERP and Planning and Budgeting, enterprises achieve instantaneous access to economical and functional data without requiring sharing data manually. 

They can make use of predictive demand forecasting capabilities for periodic and irregular demand. This is for analyzing numerous demand cases quickly. This enables one to dynamically act on varying market scenarios and presumptions.  

This ensures a greater level of data unity, greater collaboration and enhanced controls over departments within a single solution. Both NetSuite Planning and Budgeting allows organizing at the at the consumer, regional levels. For instance, Stock Keeping Units, product lines and more.  

That data is instinctively accessible in NetSuite and is able to make a demand scheme and initiate purchase orders. Demand forecasting assists an organization in making efficient purchasing and stocking choices. organizing demand grounded on sales data and market research enables businesses to stay efficient in competition and enlarge.   

Are you planning to switch to NetSuite? Connect with Jobin & Jismi. We are always ready to help you with any NetSuite related concerns.