Overview
For the delight of Planners, key account managers and anyone who benefits from planning their demand for items down on the customer group level. We offer you the tool to forecast, plan and promote on separate customer groups, that is 100% real time integrated with order calculations ensuring a robust supply chain.
You can plan channels in both the item card and in Sales plans.
This article describes the item card Channel planning
This feature is part of the Planning pro subscription and requires custom data mapping.
The user can plan their items down to a channel on the item or sku level. Accessible through the item card, plans tab. Across the system: Items, Reports, Orders.
Channels
Before you start
Channels Settings
The Channels can have two behaviors, controlled in the settings
Forecast and promotions
Splits the sales history by enabled channels and from there calculates unique channel forecasts, in addition to sales plans and promotion data series.
Promotions
This option keeps the item level forecast, but splits the promotional data series into channels to plan additional channel demand that adds on to the regular recurring forecasted demand.
The workflow - Finding items to plan
In addition to simply finding an item number or an item name, there are two channel columns and filters, that can help in the process.
To find the columns or filters you can simply start keying in "customer"
Once these columns are visible, you can quickly identify which items have sales history by channel. Any channel listed in the “…with Sales” column has historical sales data that can be used to generate a separate Channel Forecast for that item.
Use filters to make the workflow easier. For example, add the Channel with Sales filter to narrow the list to items with sales history in a specific channel.
This makes it easier to identify and select the items that are good candidates for Channel Forecasting.
Column / filter | Description |
Channels | Items that have been split, by a user, into channel plans |
Channels with sales | items that have historic sales from customers listed in the defined channels. |
The workflow - create the channel plan
When the data has been mapped the “channels” icon will appear in the item card plans tab, as can be seen on the below picture.
Find an item to plan by channel
Open the item card, plans tab
Click on the channel icon
A pop up window appears, with the available channels
Toggle in the channels that you would like to plan the item on going forward.
Once the channels have been chosen, click on "Apply"
Note! The channels window indicates the historic split of the sales history: how many sales lines each channel contributed to, and the sales ratio from the total sales history.
The more channels created the more fragmented the forecast:
The item's sales history is split by channel and a new automatic forecast is created on a more granular level.
Item + location + channel.
The workflow - Start planning, with default settings
Now that you have enabled the channel, there are a few things to consider.
Time level & horizon: you can plan on months, weeks or days, and choose the horizon forth and back.
The data series are split by the channels chosen.
The green fields indicate editable planning options
Sales plan: by default mirrors the statistical forecast, when overwritten a green solid bar appears to the left.
inputs to the sales plan override the statistical forecast
Promotion data series starts empty, user input will add on top of the sales plan.
The total demand is the aggregated sum, used in the order calculations
Ease of working
To focus the planning efforts, a filter option can be applied
Resulting in a focused view:
Workflow - Planning with the promotion setting option
With the setting option: promotion, the Channels in the item card will look like this
Here the user will plan channel demand as additional demand on top of the item's or sku's forecast
The details - Channels
Data series
Channels by default splits up the following data series: Forecast, sales plan, promotions, sale, last years sale, connected sale, stockout bridging
Sales plans or promotions, If data is already inserted in these, it is discarded when channels is enabled
Connected sales: is on the customer + item/sku level
Forecast: splitting the item down to channels, means the channel forecasts might get different forecasting models, that will have a different result.
Stock out smoothing will have different values, because the bridging is filled with a different forecast calculation
Functionality that will remain calculated/controlled/displayed on the item level
Safety stock
Forecast settings, in item details
Legacy sales
Safety stock
Remains calculated on the item level
Forecast settings
item level, there can not be separate settings per customer group
Legacy sales:
Is not displayed in separate historic legacy sales series, the entire legacy sales history remains as one series on the item
Customer group plans vs the Sales Planner
For Users that have been using the Legacy sales plans in the plans tab
Basically you can not use both for the same items! The channel sales plans and promotions are on separate codebase and do not work together
The Legacy Sales planner does not show the aggregated plan from the Channels planning. When setting upp Channels, users who have been planning must adopt the new Sales plans which supports the Channels.
Example: if a user has been planning in the sales planner, then splits an item in the item card and starts planning on the Channels. The old planned inputs are ignored.
How can I activate the Channels feature?
Contact your customer success manager through the in app chat or direct via e-mail
What data is needed?
Users must define the Channels, and link individual customers to each Channel. Our integration specialist will then map the data and create the Channels.
What does the Channels feature cost?
included in the planning pro package subscription
Included in the "custom mapping" subscription
Users subscribed to the standard connector must upgrade to the "custom mapping connector" subscription.