Become a More Demand-Driven Organization

Companies operating supply chains today are squeezed between a demand side that is increasingly volatile and a supply side that is increasingly complex and difficult to change quickly. On the demand side, customer expectations are growing steadily, and upside revenue opportunity is there for companies that can respond to it. Yet, today’s supply chains are often spread across global networks in which lack of visibility and long decision-making time make it difficult to plan and execute with speed and precision. In this reality, it’s no surprise that the “need for responsiveness” often appears as a top pain point in numerous surveys of supply chain executives.

To address these issues, companies are evolving to become more demand-driven by focusing on three critical success factors:

• Improved collaboration to boost visibility into the supply chain
• Optimized inventory levels across a network to plan and execute predictably
• Responsive planning processes and what-if analysis to flexibly react to changing needs

This whitepaper will discuss how companies can address these three factors. It will also touch on the SAP solutions available to support these critical elements of demand-driven supply networks, including the new SAP Supply Chain Response Management application by ICON-SCM that enables companies to better manage order fulfillment and forecasts to improve their responsive planning processes.