The scenarios recognize key process competencies that must be addressed by the trading partners to determine which company should lead core process activities. A set of trading partners may choose to use more than one scenario in their partnership framework, depending on the nature of the products, the impacts of promotional or seasonal processes, or the level of importance of the steps to either trading partner. A Single Forecast of Consumer Demand Retailers and manufacturers have different views of the marketplace. Retailers see and interact with the end consumer in person and infer consumer behavior using POS data. They also see a range of manufacturers, their product offerings, and their plans for marketing those products.
Manufacturers see a range of retailers and their merchandising plans.
They can also monitor consumer activity, with some delays, through syndicated data. Given these different views, the trading partners can improve their demand planning capabilities through an iterative exchange of data and business intelligence without breaching confidences. The end result is a single shared forecast of consumer demand at the point of sale. This single shared-demand plan can then become the foundation for all internal planning activities related to that product for the retailer and the manufacturer. In other words, it enables value-chain integration.