Norwalk, Conn.—Dec. 12, 2012—Demand planning solutions provider Terra Technology now provides enhanced features to its Demand Sensing 4.2, Multi-Enterprise Inventory Optimization 4.2 and Transportation Forecasting 4.2 product suite. The software updates are designed to improve supply chain performance across more diverse business situations and larger multi-national deployments to better serve customers; free cash flow; and increase return on capital. New capabilities to process external information sources with “noisy” data provide a more accurate prediction of demand, even in volatile markets.
“Our customers are constantly changing to better serve retailers and consumers, managing continued volatility in markets, responding to growth opportunities and improving their product mix through acquisitions and divestitures,” said Robert F. Byrne, President and Chief Executive Officer, Terra Technology. “These product enhancements let manufacturers correctly anticipate orders across a wider range of global business situations and under any market conditions.”
New features of the products help manufacturers address such challenges as forecast accuracy and demand predictions; counteract the costs of market volatility; and lower the inventory required to serve their customers.
Demand sensing
New three-dimensional mapping capabilities provide flexibility to model items in complex distribution networks. This allows companies to support a wider range of business scenarios; better promote growth in emerging markets; and accommodate network changes from activities like mergers, acquisitions or divestitures.
Increased engine efficiency provides additional scalability to accommodate larger global implementations, processing significantly more operations without increasing runtimes.
New exception management features ensure meaningful results when using data from external sources, such as trading partners. Safely extracting predictive information from these data streams allows Demand Sensing to further improve prediction accuracy, especially in volatile markets.
Multi-enterprise inventory optimization
Enhanced modeling capabilities allow manufacturers to better meet retailer needs at the lowest possible cost by using customer-specific service levels for the same product within a single warehouse. By prioritizing shipments from the distribution center, manufacturers can fulfill service commitments with less total inventory.
New flexibility features support a wider range of business scenarios and diverse distribution requirements found in global deployments. For example, storage constraints ensure that inventory is optimized without overloading smaller warehouses—a significant concern in emerging markets.
Improved user experience provides richer visual interfaces and constraint validation and reporting, improving user productivity.
Transportation forecasting
Enhanced promotions modeling provides better visibility to promotional impact on shipping lanes. Unexpected jumps in transportation from promotions tend to be the most costly and disruptive for logistics professionals. Greater visibility helps shippers lower costs, improve efficiency and proactively collaborate with carriers to meet promotional needs.
In addition, the use of retailer data to improve transportation forecasts is now supported. Manufacturers can further leverage demand signal repository investments to improve transportation forecast accuracy.
