Jefferson Barr
How important is a deep understanding of one ’ s suppliers ? Very . We have seen where our clients went through a process of identifying underperforming suppliers , surfacing the past results , and finding that those suppliers were completely unaware of what was happening in the organisation . This is often the case when you deal with hundreds , or even thousands , of suppliers . Better collaboration leads to a leaner stock-holding , and the ability to jointly plan around supply chain disruptions .
Jefferson Barr
TITLE : CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER COMPANY : NETSTOCK INDUSTRY : DEMAND PLANNING LOCATION : NEW YORK
An experienced sales and marketing executive , expert in SaaS , B2B , high-tech and enterprise software solutions . He says of himself : “ I ’ m proficient in developing and executing strategic sales and marketing programs focused on driving revenue , generating demand , building market awareness , and consistently achieving business goals .
Pre-digital , what did demand planning look like ? Demand planning is a process , and as with any process you have a list of steps that needs to be followed for it to work . With all the sophisticated planning tools available today , this process is sped up so that demand planners can review past results at scale and identify exceptions much faster than the old “ line-by-line ” paper-based review process .
What elements of pre-digital demand planning remain important ? Most definitely the internal collaboration between different stakeholders in the organisation . Demand planning is an inputheavy , people driven process and there are also various units of measurement within the organisation .
Unfortunately , that will not be replaced by any planning tools in the near future , as people are connected to the real world and their judgement is a key input to the demand planning process . But a word of caution here : technology will only help you do ‘ bad things ’ quicker if you don ’ t have proper processes and procedures in place . How different was demand planning , pre-pandemic ? The work-from-home movement obviously resulted in far more remote planningsessions . We have seen that remote planning-teams often spend more time huddling around the issue at hand and less time on inter-relationship tension , which we all know exists in a highly stressful environment like a demand planning review meeting . In many cases , the ‘ newnormal ’ way of remote demand planning has improved the flow of insight and quality of planning .