In today’s fast-paced business environment, accurate demand planning is critical to ensuring that companies can meet customer demand while minimizing excess inventory, reducing costs, and improving operational efficiency. Add in the complexity of increasingly global supply chains (and the resulting supply chain disruptions), unpredictable consumer behavior, and ever-evolving market dynamics, and the need for sophisticated software tools to forecast demand and make data-driven decisions becomes even more clear. Let’s explore some of the top demand planning software tools on the market, including Anaplan, Kinaxis, Blue Yonder, o9, Logility, and ORI, to help you understand more about the strengths of each.

Anaplan

Anaplan is a cloud-based platform that provides a unified solution for planning and decision-making. It is widely used for demand planning, supply chain management, and financial planning, enabling organizations to improve forecasting accuracy, streamline operations, and drive better business outcomes. Anaplan’s clients include Nissan Motors, Coca-Cola bottlers, Godiva Chocolates, Lodge Cast Iron, and Del Monte foods.

Go to Anaplan website

Key features

• Cloud-based platform with intuitive UX: Anaplan’s cloud infrastructure offers flexibility, scalability, and the ability to integrate data from multiple sources, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes. The company says that calculations stay consistent and rapid for all data sets and any number of users. You can deploy Anaplan via desktop, tablets, and native mobile apps for iOS and Android. The UX enables team members to view KPIs, receive alerts, and make timely changes and updates easily and on-the-fly. Multi-device accessibility simplifies planning from desktop to tablet to mobile.
• Connected planning: Anaplan connects various functions within the organization, including sales, marketing, and supply chain teams, providing a collaborative environment for all stakeholders. Anaplan says their platform enables your entire enterprise to share continually updated information in real-time across devices for flexibility and rapid decisions. Intuitive model-building requires zero coding knowledge.

One metric we loved to see cited in an Anaplan/Kemps Dairy success story was “66% fewer meetings thanks to greater speed and trust.” Any solution that results in fewer meetings is bound to make demand planning team leads happy.

• Real-time analytics and AI-driven planning: With Anaplan, users can generate real-time forecasts based on accurate, up-to-date data. The platform allows for rapid scenario analysis, enabling businesses to quickly adapt to changing market conditions. Anaplan leverages historical data, real-time analytics, and collaboration to deliver effective demand forecasts. The company cites their proprietary AI technology that continuously gathers insights from businesses worldwide, enabling unlimited modeling capabilities. Advanced machine learning algorithms that iteratively self-optimize, facilitating predictive intelligence and intent data on millions of companies worldwide, including geo-mapping capability.
• Customization and flexibility: The platform allows users to create custom planning models tailored to their specific needs. Anaplan’s intuitive user interface and drag-and-drop features make it easy for users to adjust parameters and modify plans.

Kinaxis

Kinaxis is a cloud-based platform known as a key solution for supply chain planning, including demand forecasting. Kinaxis’s powerful, AI-enabled supply chain orchestration platform, Maestro™, combines proprietary technologies and techniques that provide full transparency and agility across the entire supply chain — from multi-year strategic planning to last-mile delivery. Kinaxis clients include Mazda, Ricoh, Eaton, Ipsen, Subaru, and Bell Helicopters.

Go to Kinaxis website

Key features

• Immediate performance insights: Kinaxis says their demand planning application’s out-of-the-box dashboards give you performance insights on day one. Standard measures include Consensus Demand Plan, Forecast Accuracy Exceptions, Data Errors/Outliers, Forecast Value Add, and Forecast Accuracy.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Kinaxis says their responsibility-based, context-driven and completely mobile RapidResponse system automatically shows you who to work with and delivers the details you need to make decisions right at your fingertips.
• Real-time data: Kinaxis’s Live Lens capabilities let anyone see a real-time view of supply chain health and key business and supply chain metrics. Kinaxis integrates real-time data from multiple sources to create accurate demand forecasts, giving businesses the ability to respond to demand changes rapidly.
• Easily scalable: Whether your initial focus is S&OP/IBP, demand, supply, inventory – Kinaxis points out you can start from anywhere and grow the way you want with their optional industry-specific packages or enhanced planning add-ons. Their RapidResponse platform is easily scalable and delivers the capabilities you need to grow and succeed.
• Scenario simulation: Kinaxis’s Director of Product Marketing says, “The creation of what-if scenarios should happen in the blink of an eye. Anyone on your team should be able to simulate anything at any time with unparalleled speed. It’s what lets you make better supply chain decisions, faster.” Kinaxis allows users to quickly simulate different demand scenarios and evaluate potential outcomes, helping team leads anticipate supply chain disruptions and prepare for a range of demand fluctuations.
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning: Kinaxis says they leverage AI and machine learning to improve forecast accuracy. The platform’s algorithms analyze historical data, trends, and market conditions to predict future demand patterns more accurately.

Blue Yonder

Blue Yonder, formerly JDA Software, is a leader in AI-powered, end-to-end supply chain  solutions. The company’s demand planning software uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help businesses optimize their forecasting processes and improve supply chain efficiency. Clients include Michelin, Renault, Mitsubishi, Mahindra, Campbell’s, and Amway.

Go to Blue Yonder website

Key features

• AI and machine learning integration: Blue Yonder’s platform incorporates advanced machine learning algorithms to generate more accurate forecasts based on historical demand patterns, market trends, and external data sources. The company says their AI and automation can cut through the complexity, turning data into actionable insights, so you can focus on strategy and drive your business forward.
  
  
• End-to-end SCM: Blue Yonder offers a comprehensive suite of tools for demand planning, inventory management, sales forecasting, and replenishment. This end-to-end solution helps businesses align all aspects of their supply chain. If you’re looking for an all-in-one SCM (supply chain management) platform, Blue Yonder might meet your needs.
  
  
• Increased supply chain resilience: Blue Yonder says you can improve resilience by leveraging advanced technology to identify the hidden opportunities that come with every disruptive event. That’s definitely a glass-half-full perspective that we find refreshing.
• Collaboration tools: Blue Yonder’s platform facilitates collaboration between all relevant teams (e.g., sales, marketing, supply chain management) to ensure that demand planning is aligned with business goals as well as customer needs.
  
  
• Demand forecasting with real-time data: By using real-time data and advanced analytics, Blue Yonder says they allow businesses to adjust their forecasts quickly and respond to market changes, which is particularly important in dynamic industries like retail and consumer goods.
• Cloud-based flexibility: Blue Yonder uses a cloud-based platform that helps support scalability, flexibility, and seamless integration with other business systems.
  
  

o9 Solutions

o9 Solutions, or “o9,” is an integrated business planning software provider that focuses on delivering advanced analytics to optimize forecasting and supply chain management. With an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use, o9 Solutions caters to companies looking for powerful but intuitive IBP tools. Clients include Toyota, Starbucks, Philips, T-Mobile, and Pepsico.

Go to o9 Solutions website

Key features

• Demand forecasting: o9 uses advanced statistical techniques to generate more accurate demand forecasts. The company says their solution allows you to rapidly identify short-term trends and market shifts to accurately predict what consumers want, when and where.
• Demand driver modeling: o9 says the platform allows you to model daily internal and external demand drivers, actual order pacing, as well as market-level signals. Different demand models with varying levels of granularity, all coexisting in the same platform,  can be used for different horizons and decisions.
• Automation within the supply chain: o9’s demand planning functionality is capable of sending automated signals to the supply chain to drive deployment decisions and reconcile long-term forecasts with short-term demand sensing models.
• Integration with ERP Systems: o9 says the platform integrates seamlessly with other enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, enabling businesses to synchronize demand data across the organization.
• User-friendly interface: The o9 platform is designed to be user-friendly, even for those with varying levels of technical expertise. This makes it easier for teams to collaborate, input data, and produce reports that are useful to other teams.

• Continuous optimization: With built-in analytics, o9 helps businesses continuously improve forecast accuracy, enhancing the long-term effectiveness of demand planning efforts.
  
  

Logility

Logility is a global provider of supply chain management software that offers powerful demand planning solutions for businesses across various industries. The platform combines advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning to help companies optimize their demand planning and supply chain operations. Clients include Reynolds, Tillamook, Fender, Leupold, and Red Wing Shoes.

Go to Logility website

Key features

• AI enabled collaboration across teams: Logility says their DemandAI+ engine fuses generative AI with machine learning algorithms, creating a modern, more inclusive, and intuitive planning paradigm that quickly digitizes supply chain relationships and exposes that data to any stakeholder across the organization. By simply asking questions via GenAI planners, executives, and non-planners alike get answers to unanticipated queries in real-time, providing transparency for faster, more informed decisions that save precious planning time.
  
  
• Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP): Depending on which package you purchase, Logility includes tools for S&OP, which helps align demand plans with supply plans, ensuring that organizations can balance customer needs with available resources.
  
  
• Cloud or on-premises deployment: The Logility platform offers both cloud and on-premises deployment options, providing flexibility for organizations with different IT infrastructures.
  
  
• Advanced scenario planning: Logility says their demand planning engine+ eliminates “black-box” forecasting, enabling planners to visualize demand drivers like events or promotions and quickly see their impact on forecasted demand. With DemandAI+ you can understand and explain the forecast composition faster than ever before. In addition, DemandAI+ automatically detects anomalies in your historical demand and surfaces them for review, allowing you to tag irregular demand as exceptional events. Leveraging AI, the system learns from this to produce a more accurate forecast with significantly less effort.

ORI

Operational Results Inc. is an innovative demand planning and forecasting solution that leverages proprietary data management, AI systems, and process automation to streamline and optimize data gathering, analysis, scenario creation, and sharing easy-to-understand reports and dashboards across teams. With its focus on providing intelligent, data-driven insights, ORI simplifies the demand planning process and helps organizations enhance their forecasting accuracy, always with the goal of facilitating effective integrated business planning. ORI has led some of the most successful and advanced S&OP implementations in industries such as automotive products, chemicals, consumer packaged goods, cosmetics, electronics, food and beverage, health care, logistics and transportation, paper goods, and more.

Go to Operational Results Inc. website

Key features

• Suitable for both small and large organizations: Unlike some competitors, ORI’s platform is suitable for businesses of various sizes, offering you a competitive edge in a rapidly evolving market.
• Specifically built to ensure alignment and collaboration across teams: At ORI, “purpose built” means just that – the ORI Excellence Platform was built to serve the distinct purpose of ensuring constant alignment between sales, inventory, finance, and operations. This holistic view helps optimize all aspects of the supply chain and improve overall efficiency. The platform fosters collaboration among various departments and stakeholders, ensuring that key decision-makers across different functions are involved in the planning process, which leads to better coordination and smoother execution.
• Decades of industry insights: ORI is built on decades of industry success and the most intelligent technology in the industry.
• AI-driven forecasting: ORI’s demand planning solution uses machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to provide highly accurate demand forecasts. By analyzing historical sales data, market trends, and other influencing factors, the platform can help planners predict future demand with remarkable precision.

• Cloud-based platform: ORI operates on a cloud-based infrastructure, which ensures scalability, flexibility, and seamless integration with existing business systems. Being cloud-based also means that ORI’s AI is informed by real-time data access, enabling businesses to respond to changes in demand instantly.
• Automated decision-making: If the client so chooses, ORI’s engine can be enabled to take advantage of advanced automation features to simplify decision-making processes. By automating routine tasks such as data collection, analysis, and report generation, the platform frees up valuable time for demand planners or supply chain managers to focus on strategic initiatives.

For those looking for an all-in-one S&OE, S&OP, and/or IBP solution powered by real-time data, ORI provides a true enterprise solution that fully integrates reports and analytics, business scorecards, process facilitation, collaboration, and assessment criteria into one single, streamlined application that can support a multi-division environment where appropriate. ORI has expertise in every major industry, including automotive products, chemicals, consumer goods, cosmetics, electronics, food & beverage, frozen foods, glass manufacturing, health care, logistics & distribution, and paper goods. Our consultants have delivered more advanced S&OP implementations than any other consulting group. Written case studies have shown median improvements of 34% in profit improvement, 25% gains in productivity, 3% growth in revenue, 14% reduction in inventory, 8% lower costs, and 9% greater volume. Let ORI know what we can do for you.

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