Still, businesses need to look into the future to assess options and test what if scenarios. A solid demand-chain management application will do best by using the best data available. That s why a company s data warehouse should be the foundation for demand-chain management and collaboration. Rather than let data warehouses be repositories of historical information and expensive report-generators, they can become the foundation for collaboration. In this way, a company can create a forward-looking view of business performance metrics using the cleanest, most up to date information available.
Sales can collaborate with marketing and operations to ensure the company meets demand.
That update can alert the production manager to increase or decrease production accordingly. This is demand chain management in action. A more accurate view of what demand will be allows a company to fine-tune the rest of its business to make sure goals are being met. Additionally, using the data warehouse as a language standard provides not only a common vocabulary, but a consistency in measures and calculations, assuring uniformity in reporting across the entire organization. SCM vendors claim to have demand forecasting components in their offerings, but their software does not provide a view into the very lowest levels that impact demand.