Demand Planning Training & Certification

Team-based digital learning

Your team will learn:

• Demand forecasting
• Quantitative forecasting
• Qualitative forecasting
• Creating consensus
• Improving accuracy
• Forecasting process
• Simple and multiple regression
• Demand metrics

• Arrange a demo
• Download a course catalogue

Demand Planning Training & Certification

Demand planning is the important process of forecasting product demand to ensure timely delivery to customers. Master the essential techniques for forecasting demand, managing, and planning for demand uncertainty and learn how to build this into sales and operations planning.

Your team will learn the various forecasting and statistical techniques for existing and new product introductions (NPI) including quantitative and qualitative methods.

Your demand plans are the single most important input into your supply planning (MRP / ERP) and Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP). Better organizational performance relies on optimizing your demand plans, using the forecasts and their associated inaccuracies to apply the best inventory and supply planning strategies to mitigate and manage the demand risks that protect your customers.

Demand forecasting

Learn the key considerations in making a forecast by exploring real world use cases and understand the different forecasting methods – both quantitative and qualitative. Learn how to make decisions that have the most impact as well as understand how different departments use forecasts to meet organizational needs.  

Quantitative forecasting

Explore how to make accurate forecasts by using trends, cyclicality and seasonality and apply critical thinking to separate meaningful patterns from noise. Deep dive quantitative forecasting methods such as the naïve, average, moving average, weighted moving average, and exponential smoothing and learn when, and when not to use each method.

Qualitative forecasting

Learn how to use the opinions and estimates of experts, executives, and customers to make your forecasts more complete. Learn how to use qualitative forecasting methods such as the Jury of Executive Opinion, Delphi, and Salesforce composite to gain an understanding of when to use customer surveys and test marketing to enhance forecasts.

Forecasting process

Forecasting is never 100% accurate. In our “Improving the Forecasting Process” course, we explore how to influence business practices that may be the root cause of forecast inaccuracy and how to diagnose and solve problems in the process of demand forecasting. 

Creating consensus

Examine the role of the consensus forecast – combining distinct sets and sources. Learn about top-down and bottom-up forecasts, including the advantages and disadvantages of each and understand key decisions such as the forecasting horizon, interval and discover the benefits of multi-department data sets to create the best possible demand forecast.  

Improving accuracy

Effective insights rely on accurate data. Learn how to determine how large (Mean Absolute Percentage Error) and in which direction (forecast bias) your errors are. You will learn which forecasts to measure, which time span, how often, and which levels to measure. You will learn about potential causes of forecast error, how to spot and course correct them.

Advanced time

Go even further and explore advanced methods such as Holt’s 2-factor method and explain the Holt-Winters method simply. Trends slow down over time, so this course explains how to use damped trends to ensure your forecasts stay accurate longer. We provide full mathematical calculations and complete example calculations as downloads, providing learners with everything they need to apply these methods straight away.

Simple regression

Understand the techniques and know-how to improve the accuracy of forecasts by identifying factors that affect demand, such as advertising and calculating the impact they have on demand.

Multiple regression

Further improve accuracy of forecasting by accounting for many causal factors, such as advertising, discounts, and the state of the economy, then learn how to test how good your forecasting model is.

New products

Understand essential methods to plan for NPI’s such as market sizing, bass diffusion model, market intelligence, expert opinion, and other methods for determining demand for new products.

Demand metrics

Learn how to measure and improve agility and asset management efficiency, with real-world examples of how the supply chain function can contribute to the improvement of these metrics.