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Demand Sensing and Forecasting in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Retail

Supply Chain

woman shopping in the aisle of a grocery store

InterSystems Technology Improves Your Demand Forecast Accuracy and Fulfillment Rates by Enabling Near-Perfect OTIF of 99.999% in Months Not Years

InterSystems IRIS® intelligent data platform enables you to adjust forecast plans with high levels of accuracy to successfully navigate sudden events, disruptions, or trends that affect demand, transforming your fulfillment optimisation. Without any need to “rip-and-replace” existing systems, you can integrate more advanced sensing and forecasting capabilities with your point-of-sale, ERP systems, or applications, achieving faster time-to-value.

The Challenge

Significant disruptions along the supply chain from geopolitical events, supplier capacity issues, poor network inventory visibility, and constant changes in buyer behaviour, make synchronising demand and supply very difficult. This is further complicated by inaccurate data from hundreds of disparate applications and enterprise systems within the organisation, its partners, and its suppliers. The ability to sense demand disruptions in real time and improve forecasting in this environment is difficult to achieve, especially if you want a high degree of customer satisfaction.

Accomplishing this is challenging if you rely solely on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) applications. These often lack the ability to ingest and analyse masses of disparate data from multiple sources in real time and turn them into actionable insights. This can lead to missed opportunities for sales, and the inability to reduce operational costs with improved customer experience.

Consistent Data - Real-Time Data and Analytics - Intelligent Processes - Actionable Insights

The Solution

InterSystems IRIS data platform will revolutionise optimisation of your COTS systems to ensure high levels of demand and supply synchronisation.

Uniquely able to create a connective tissue between different systems, it embeds four advanced technologies that act as a single capability using a smart data fabric to significantly improve time-to-value.

A proven technology, the platform will ingest all required data at rest from the sources that matter, both internally and externally, including geopolitical events, information on supply chain product integrity issues, supplier fulfillment discrepancies, and much more. Harmonising and normalising all this information to provide accurate data in real time, InterSystems IRIS simulates your business processes and then applies embedded AI and ML capabilities. With no “rip-and-replace” needed, you gain accelerated implementation of powerful new capabilities, while lowering total cost of ownership in a way unmatched in the industry today.

A Proven Partner
SPAR Hungary, a member of the world’s largest food retailer consortium, is using InterSystems technology as its in-house grocery management application to help enable real-time demand shifts for up to 800 weekly promotions in 500 stores, significantly increasing on-shelf availability with high levels of accuracy.
Key Benefits
Typical order optimisation benefits are:

Service
Generate major gains in on-shelf availability and order fulfillment with real-time sensing and forecasting precision for increased revenue due to significantly optimised on time in full (OTIF)

Cost
Match inventory to demand accurately to improve efficiency and reduce waste

Quality
Significantly improve product shelf-life with optimised demand sensing and forecasting

People
Enable business users to make more real-time intelligent and accurate decisions consistently, and with confidence

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