

I know from personal experience how hard it is to incorporate input from sales into a statistically generated demand plan when all you have to work with is emails, phone calls and spreadsheets. The hours spent verifying the data, entering the overrides and then deciding whether you really want those overrides to affect the resultant forecast that drives purchasing and manufacturing decisions can quickly consume all of your “spare” time. I am not saying there isn’t value in that forward-looking market intelligence; quite the opposite. In such a manual collaboration process, I am just not convinced that an analyst couldn’t spend their time on activities that generate higher value.
As a demand planner and a leader of a demand planning team, I have personally heard many reasons why the sales organization does not want to provide market intelligence. Just a few include:

Written by
Henry Canitz
Short bio
Product Marketing Director Hank brings more than 25 years of experience building high performance supply chains. This experience includes evaluating, selecting, implementing, using and marketing supply chain technology. Hank’s graduate degree in SCM from Michigan State, numerous SCM certifications, diverse experience as a supply chain practitioner and experience in senior marketing roles with leading supply chain solution providers helps him to bring a unique perspective on supply chain best practices and supporting technology to the Voyager Blog.