Demand planning can guide businesses to improve the accuracy of revenue forecasts, align inventory levels with peaks and troughs in demand, and enhance profitability for a given channel or product. Many of our clients who rely on IBM Cognos TM1 for financial planning, reporting and analysis have asked us to help them design and develop TM1-based demand planning applications.

We recently blogged about two examples of using IBM Cognos TM1 for demand planning. One was demand planning in the food and beverage industry and the other was in professional services.  Another client of who asked us to use TM1 for demand planning is a roofing materials company in the manufacturing industry.

They tasked us with creating a solution that would deliver comprehensive functionality for operational planning and analysis to help them optimize and create efficiencies for the products it manufactures and the associated shipping costs and resources required to get the products to the customers.

One aspect of this system is a volume and demand planning model that collects and analyzes data by product, by region and by customer. This gives the business the visibility needed to make decisions based on what to manufacture and where to manufacture it.

Read more about demand planning in the manufacturing industry.