Becoming truly demand-driven is core to the journey of Business Maturity® and evolving into a stream-lined, data-driven, agile enterprise. You not only have to trust the demand, but you also have to listen to it and produce and buy to the actual demand, even if it is not perfect (and by the way it never is). Only when the whole organization believes and works together to meet demand do you see a truly agile intelligent organization.
Without specific prerequisites noted in this paper, everything else will fall flat, and SAP becomes a siloed data vehicle instead of the transformative business tool it is meant to be. The ultimate goal is turning data into insights, and insights into action.
You might think SAP is one-size-fits all, or that your company is all one production type, but most companies are a mixture. This requires setting up planning strategies for each product line, or even better, each SKU. To run optimally, you must have the right stocking strategy and replenishment model for each product. This dictates what planning strategy to use, and how the forecast and customer order demand signals are used in the system. SAP offers a myriad of options to meet those varying needs. If this isn’t leveraged, forecast data will not be trusted nor used as required, which can lead to broad ramifications to the business.
Once you are operating as a demand-driven business, using and improving forecasts within SAP, setting up the correct planning strategies, you will reap the rewards of agile, efficient production and be well on your way to becoming a digital supply chain.
