Demand Management Consulting Services

Optimize your business performance with our demand management consulting as we help you to effectively create, influence, and manage demand.

Oliver Wight’s world-class Demand Management consultancy is designed to help your organization optimize its Demand Management processes, ensuring they align perfectly with your unique needs and strategic objectives.

Our comprehensive service can help you transform your Demand Management practices through expert guidance and support. From strategic demand planning solutions to hands-on coaching, our consultants will work closely with you to develop a robust and effective Demand Management capability.

Demand Management consulting can include:

  • Change management – monitoring and support of the implementation of change and its impact on your people

  • Transfer of our knowledge to your people so they can deploy an effective Demand Management process for your business

  • Facilitate the design of a Demand Management process to best fit your organization and its needs

  • Assessment of your Demand Management process and validation that has achieved Class A level of effectiveness – firmly embedded as the ‘way you do things’ and delivering the benefits you wanted

  • Scoping an action plan to define standards, address issues and take advantage of the opportunities identified, including resourcing, timelines and performance improvement expectations

  • A diagnostic assessment of the effectiveness of your current process, including identifying the root cause of any performance issues

  • Coaching your Demand Management process users as you introduce new ways of working.

Demand Management includes all aspects of deploying your organization's value proposition. As such, a demand plan must reflect those multiple inputs (see diagram below). This is why our consultancy services address factors from analytics and assumptions to customer collaboration, modeling and more.

 

Demand Plan Requires Multiple Input

 

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How mature is your organization's Demand Management?

Before embarking on any performance improvement program, it is essential to identify your organization's true level of maturity. The Oliver Wight Maturity Model characterizes an organization as being in one of four key phases of maturity: 

  1. Coordination

  2. Business Process Control

  3. Automation

  4. Integration

Assess your business maturity in Demand Management using our free online self-assessment tool. 

Assess Your Business Maturity

How you can benefit from Demand Management Consultation

  • Identify gaps between the latest demand projections and the annual plan early, providing more time to close them

  • Establish clear accountability and create motivation amongst the sales and marketing teams

  • Eliminate demand forecast bias and improve demand plan accuracy to improve customer service and reduce safety stock

  • Ensure strategic and business plan revenue streams are achieved

  • Increase focus on meeting customer needs and expectations

  • Reduce chaos when orders exceed supply or are less than planned

  • Create trust in the demand plans for short, medium and long-term horizons, allowing in other business functions to use it for demand planning

  • Integrate volume, value and margin views underpinned by assumptions, vulnerability opportunity management and scenario planning

  • Increase sales revenue

You should consider Demand Management for your business if:

  • You are struggling to hit sales revenue and margin plans

  • It is unclear where growth will come from

  • You are wrestling with poor forecast accuracy and see over or under forecasting

  • Your people across all functions blame the forecast for problems in serving customers and high inventory

  • Ownership of sales and marketing plans is unclear

  • Lack of supply results in chaos and stress for sales, marketing and customer service teams

  • Sales and marketing blame the supply chain for not being able to fulfil demand and for losing sales and customer loyalty

  • You are feeling like you are constantly scrambling to hit the monthly sales plan

How Demand Management Consultation can help you:

  • Change management – monitoring and support of the implementation of change and its impact on your people

  • Transfer of our knowledge to your people so they can deploy an effective Demand Management process for your business

  • Facilitate the design of a Demand Management process to best fit your organization and its needs

  • Assessment of your Demand Management process and validation that has achieved Class A level of effectiveness – firmly embedded as the ‘way you do things’ and delivering the benefits you wanted

  • Scoping an action plan to define standards, address issues and take advantage of the opportunities identified, including resourcing, timelines and performance improvement expectations

  • A diagnostic assessment of the effectiveness of your current process, including identifying the root cause of any performance issues

  • Coaching your Demand Management process users as you introduce new ways of working

What Is Demand Management?

Demand Management includes all aspects of deploying your organization's value proposition to the marketplace. Market, channel, customer, and consumer activities are driven from a strategic level through market and market segment roadmaps. These guide market segment plans which are executed through detailed, time-phased sales and marketing activities.

The demand plan requires multiple inputs. Analytics, assumptions, modelling, and customer collaboration are used to generate demand forecasts that integrate with, and drive the operational plans for your organization, while also providing insights for improving sales and marketing performance.

Demand execution processes ensure that the response to actual demand is proactively managed in line with market segment plans and include demand sensing, forecast consumption monitoring, abnormal Demand Management, order commitment through available-to-promise, and service level definition through customer segmentation and prioritization.

Aspects of Demand Management

Demand and Supply Chain Management
By accurately forecasting demand, organizations can align their supply chain activities to ensure that the right products are available at the right time, reducing the risk of stockouts or overstock situations. Integrated demand and Supply Chain Management also enable better resource allocation, production planning, and distribution strategies, enhancing overall efficiency and responsiveness to market changes.

Demand forecasting and inventory management
Demand forecasting aims to predict future customer demand based on historical data, market trends, and predictive analytics. Accurate demand forecasts help in maintaining optimal inventory levels, ensuring that products are available when customers need them without tying up excess capital in inventory which helps to minimize carrying costs and reduces the likelihood of obsolescence, while also preventing stockouts that could lead to lost sales and decreased customer loyalty.

Demand Management strategies
Effective Demand Management strategies often include demand forecasting, which leverages advanced analytics and historical data to predict future customer needs accurately.

Demand forecasting inventory management
Accurate demand forecasting uses advanced analytics, historical data, and market trends to predict future customer needs, enabling businesses to plan effectively and allocate resources efficiently. This foresight allows for optimal inventory levels, ensuring products are available when needed while minimizing excess stock and associated costs.

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Demand Management Consulting Services

Latest white papers & case studies

Deploying Strategy with Integrated Business Planning – The Demand Review

Demand should drive the business and advanced demand planning capability is essential in linking strategy to planning and execution via the IBP process.

Getting the Most From Demand Management

Read a series of articles written by our Partners who gained hands-on, real-world demand management experience in industry before joining Oliver Wight.

Ausblick ins Ungewisse

Lässt sich in diesem Umfeld verlässlich vorhersagen, wie das Geschäft in zwei oder drei Jahren aussieht? Diese Prognose ist schwieriger, aber auch wichtiger denn je. Ein robuster Integrierter Unternehmensplanungsprozess (Integrated Business Planning Proce

Bedarfssegmentierung

Segmentierung meint nicht nur die Reaktion auf unterschiedliche Bedürfnisse der Verbraucher von heute. Es geht darum, langfristige Trends zu erkennen, zu wissen, was Kunden wollen, noch bevor sie es selbst wissen. Es geht darum, rechtzeitig zu agieren und

Making the Case: The ROI of Demand Management

This paper shows how to evaluate and communicate the value of improving the credibility of the demand plan. Several templates are included to help in quantifying and documenting the return on investment.

Want to Execute Your Strategy and Improve Financial Performance?

This white paper tells the story of one company that links Demand Management to strategy via its IBP process – and one company that does not. The white paper contrasts the financial performance of the two companies.

Uncertain Outlook: Managing The Sales Management Process with Vulnerabilities and Opportunities

In this environment, predicting what the business will look like in two or three years' time is more difficult but more important than ever.

The Power of Insight - Statistical forecasting as part of integrated demand management

Success in today’s consumer-driven business climate depends on meeting customer demand as efficiently and profitably as possible.

Role of Technology in Demand Management

Crum and Palmatier write about best practice solutions that will improve overall business performance for supply chain partners and all functions within a company impacted by the demand management process.

Relationships - The key to Effective Demand Planning

Poor forecasts are often symptoms of poor customer relationships. This paper deals with the role of sales account managers in developing collaborative relationships with key customers.

Realising the full potential of demand planning - Part 2

Written by Oliver Wight Partner, Rod Hozack, and the final installment of a two-part series, this paper focuses on the importance of behavior to influence change, as well as identifying the actions to take to positively impact the long-term demand plan.

Realising the Full Potential of Demand Planning - Part 1

In this two-part series, we explore how the longer-term demand plan should play a more prominent role in businesses. This first part will deal with the key elements in setting up the demand planning and forecasting process.

Demand Management Consulting Services

Latest videos and webinars

Oliver Wight IBP Powered by Board - Demand Review

Discover how the Demand Review Facilitator dashboard can provide visibility of actual and planned performance, highlighting changes and issues through alerts based on agreed materiality criteria.