Demand planning, as in forecasting the demand of a product or service to maximize the efficiencies inventory processes, production and deployment, should not be left derelict for the success of agile businesses. In fact, according to companies like IBM (News - Alert), even preliminary forecasts can help businesses avoid perils like overstocking or deteriorations in relationships with suppliers.
To secure a balance in the midst of shifting supply chains, there is the SAS Intelligent Planning Cloud, powered by Microsoft (News - Alert) Azure.
For retailers and manufacturers of consumer goods requiring more and more precise demand planning, SAS Intelligent Planning Cloud provides. AI-powered and fully automated, businesses can use this tool to anticipate and address customer needs and shipping disruptions, increase revenue, and reduce the overall time to finalize future forecasts by up to 47% via machine learning.
“With SAS (News - Alert) Intelligent Planning Cloud, users get the benefit of improved clarity for solving business problems without stressing over complicated cloud operations," said Dan Mitchell, Global Director of Retail and Consumer Goods at SAS. "The new norm for companies must be tapping into real-time asset, system, location and technology data with sophisticated AI and machine learning applications like those embodied by this offering. Ignoring this approach may mean lost sales, customers and market share."
Realizing value with hyper-accurate data, improving the visibility of demand volatility, ad hoc analyses via integrated worksheet analytics, and an out-of-the-box workflow design are just some of the capabilities and benefits SAS Intelligent Planning Cloud brings to the table. SAS is making this a reality because, put simply, older challenges shouldn’t hamper fresh innovations. Archaic planning approaches don’t allow for rapid, consumer-based insights, and basic planning systems (that, notably, lack automation) don’t enable the easy manipulation of data for on-the-spot strategies for enterprises. SAS Intelligent Planning Cloud is designed to clear such challenges and take the guesswork out of navigating demand.
"Successful retail and consumer goods companies need to be able to react in near-real time to operational and market conditions, as well as model future-state scenarios,” said Brian Kilcourse, Managing Partner at Retail Systems Research. "SAS technologies integrated with Microsoft Azure are intended to drive faster, more complete analytics so that businesses can realize time-to-market results more quickly. The SAS on Azure offering promotes sophisticated automated model building and management to support improved operational efficiencies."
For a free, 14-day trial of SAS Intelligent Planning on Microsoft Azure, click here.