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Customer group planning

This article describes the customer group planning in the item card, available to planning pro subscribers

Updated over a week ago

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.

This feature is part of the Planning pro subscription and requires custom data mapping.

The user can plan their items down to a customer group or channel on the item or sku level. Accessible through the item card, plans tab. Across the system: Items, Reports, Orders.

Customer group planning

Before you start

Customer group planning Settings

The customer group planning can have two behaviors, controlled in the settings

  1. Forecast and promotions

    1. Splits the sales history by groups and from there calculates unique customer group forecasts, in addition to sales plans and promotion data series.

  2. Promotions

    1. This option keeps the item level forecast, but splits the promotional data series into customer groups to plan additional demand by customer groups that add 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 customer planning columns and filters, that can help in the process.

To find the columns or filters you can simply start keying in "customer"

Once the columns are on the screen, the user can see which items have customer group sales data behind them. Items that have customer group names in the "..with sales names" column are ready for customer group level planning.

The filters can help with the workflow, for example by adding the filter "Customer group with sales names" and changing the type from 'starts with' to 'Contains' and filling out "UK" will filter on all items where customer groups in the UK channel have a sales history

Column / filter

Description

Customer group names

Items that have been split, by a user, into a customer group plan

Customer group with sales names

items that have historic sales from customers listed in the defined customer groups.

The workflow - create the customer group plan

When the data has been mapped the “customer groups” icon will appear in the item card plans tab, as can be seen on the below picture.

  1. Find an item to plan by customer groups

  2. Open the item card, plans tab

  3. Click on the customer group icon

  4. A pop up window appears, with the available groups/channels to plan on

  5. Toggle in the customer groups that you would like to plan the item on going forward.

  6. Once the customer groups have been chosen, click on "Apply"

Note! The customer groups window indicates the historic split of the sales history: how many sales lines each group contributed to, and the sales ratio from the total sales history.

The more customer groups created the more fragmented the forecast: (with the default settings)

the item's sales history is split into the customer groups and new automatic forecasts are created on a more granular level.

Item + location + customer group.

The workflow - Start planning, with default settings

Now that you have created the customer group plan, 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 customer groups 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 Customer planning in the item card will look like this

Here the user will plan customer group sales as additional demand on top of the item or sku level forecast

The details - Customer group planning

Data series

Customer group planning by default splits up the following data series: Forecast, sales plan, promotions, sale, last years sale, connected sale, stockout bridging

  • Sales plans or promo, If data is already inserted in these, it is discarded when customer group planning is enabled

  • Adjusted sales: only possible in the customer tab, users can not adjust sales in the chart or grid or plan tab

  • Connected sales: is on the customer + item/sku level

  • Forecast: splitting the item down to customers, means the customer group 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

Functionality that is disabled with customer group level planning

  • Promotional smoothing

  • Adjusted sales

Promotional smoothing

Disabled, the data is not available down to customers.

Adjusted sales

Can only be made through the customer breakdown in the item card

Customer group plans vs the Sales Planner

For Users that have been using the sales plans in the plans tab

Basically you can not use both for the same items! The customer group plan does not work with the sales planner.

The Sales planner does not show the aggregated plan from the customer group plan. Therefor users must be aware at which level they plan their items.

Example: if a user has been planning in the sales planner, then splits an item in the item card and starts planning on the customer group plan. The old planned inputs are ignored. The sales planner will still show the old data and has no indication that it is being ignored.

How can I activate the customer group planning feature?

Contact your customer success manager through the in app chat

Customer group planning - What data is needed?

Users must define the customer group names, and link individual customers to the group names. Our integration specialist will then create the groups and map the data.

What does the customer group planning feature cost?

  • included in the planning pro package subscription

  • Included in the "custom mapping" subscription

  • Included in the "changes to standard connector"

Users subscribed to the standard connector must upgrade to the "changes to standard connector" subscription.

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