Overview of Oracle Demantra Demand Management

Oracle Demand Management is a configurable web-based product to help your organization perform demand planning and forecasting. Demand Management is built around collaboration, and takes advantage of work flows to automate the Demand Management process.

The process of demand planning generally consists of studying historical sales data and trying to predict future demand as closely as possible. The goal is to achieve an appropriate balance between meeting customer demands as quickly as possible and making or buying only as much of each product as required.

A demand plan is based on a forecast, which in turn is a prediction of tendencies in the supply chain over a period of time, influenced by seasonal and other predictable factors. The result of a forecast is a projected curve that has been smoothed to show tendencies and deemphasize the exceptional variations.

In general, the demand plan and forecast are used in downstream operations such as production planning. Depending on how your system has been configured, it either exports such data automatically or contains reports that you use for that purpose.

The Demand Management Process

Demand Management is an iterative process, that typically takes place in the weekly, biweekly or monthly cycles. This process includes:

• Collecting the appropriate data from an ERP or other system of record. 

• Downloading the appropriate data to the Demantra database.

• Generating a forecast and then sending a notification to demand analysts.

• Demand analysts work with the forecast and making any corrections or adjustments.

•  Demand manager or designated forecast owner approves the forecast.

•  The approved forecast is uploaded to your ERP system.