2-minute read 

Today’s reality: Short-term flexibility does not do the trick anymore

In today’s reality the logistics industry faces significant challenges from both the demand and supply planning side. For example, global disruptions cause bullwhip effects with higher peaks and dips in warehousing demand, while at the same time it is getting more difficult to find the right personnel when these peaks arise. Due to increasing inbound-outbound imbalances, occupancy has structurally increased and it is harder to find additional storage space. Consequently, logistics warehousing operations cannot be executed as efficiently as in the past. Some logistics companies now even confront their customers with additional ‘occupancy surcharges’ when occupancy exceeds certain levels.

Fire prevention: Bring proven forecasting and planning best practices to the logistics industry

The logistics industry seems to be in a similar situation as many of their manufacturing and retail customers were in few decades ago: facing a clear need to embrace forecasting and planning. High-quality forecasting and logistics planning can absorb the imminent demand and supply pressures without the need for heavy capacity investments or uncontrolled short-term costs. Simply by preventing short-term issues before they arise. For example, securing enough additional flex workers for a foreseen peak in demand, or freeing up storage space prior to an expected increase of overall stock levels.

The good news is that it does not have to take decades to make a step up in this area. Logistics can profit from the proven forecasting and planning best practices that have been developed for their customers throughout the years. EyeOn Planning Services has bundled these best practices and related data science capabilities in recurrent services for its customers. This allows logistics companies to immediately harvest the benefits, while following a steep learning curve on how to effectively acquire actionable insights in ‘what happened’ and how to accurately forecast and plan ‘what is coming’.

Logistics planning Leaders vs laggards

Frontrunner logistics companies recognize the need to absorb best-practices in forecasting and planning. They see that now is the moment to plan further ahead and get ready for the years to come. By doing so these companies will experience more control and efficiency, ensuring a smooth operational process on the short-term, and preventing the need for costly firefighting.

This will give them a clear competitive advantage compared to industry peers sticking to old habits!

Ready to boost your fire prevention? EyeOn Planning Services can help you. Contact us now!

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Effectively preparing for SAP APO’s end of life

When SAP introduced APO in the ’90s, advanced planning system (APS) implementations were mega-projects with huge budgets and typically required long time-to-operate lead times.

Today, the prevailing wisdom is that companies must connect to the latest and greatest in forecasting and planning to be able to adapt to the changing dynamics in a more and more digitalized environment.

The options of what to do after SAP APO’s end of life are endless, making it difficult to determine the right course of action. Should you transfer to SAP IBP, combined with the required SAP S/4 HANA, to double down on your commitment to your one single vendor? Move to another APS suite covering all planning modules in one heavy solution? Or opt for a ‘new kid on the block’, offering cutting-edge solutions that promise the world, but aren’t yet backed up with track-record.
Either way, companies face a long IT journey and must invest upfront time and energy and commit substantial capital expenditure.

Unplugging SAP APO to your advantage

The good news is, that in just a few weeks you can already get easy access to advanced analytics for your organization – freeing up bandwidth to absorb these insights and further define and build the ideal planning landscape for your specific planning needs.

Here are two great options on how you can achieve this:

• Connect with EyeOn Planning Services as a bridge solution
• Build your fit-for-purpose planning modules in a planning platform environment.

Find more details in our publication or contact us to discuss with our experts which option best suits your business needs!

* SAP APO support has now been extended to 2027

The post SAP APO end of life – what’s next? appeared first on EyeOn.

The solution to this increasing level of uncertainty is robust scenario analysis. The EyeOn Planning Services Team helps our customer from the chemical industry with creating different demand scenarios. By combining customer’s business input, we succeeded to map the effect of potential demand changes on safety stock levels and interpreted inventory performance. Offering thus to our customer, a road map of how inventory should be managed according to each demand scenario.

The urgency agile responses is evident, however towards which direction? This is exactly where EyeOn Planning Services can make an impact; for more information explore the Planning Services website, or contact our colleague Bohdana Shumanska.

The post Creating different demand scenarios appeared first on EyeOn.

Advanced Planning Solution vendors are fueling this fear by promoting next generation tools as the solution. Next to the traditional Advanced Planning Solution vendors, ‘new kids on the block’ are emerging, making it even more difficult to make a choice. Besides, only few companies already have a clear view on how advanced analytics could give them a competitive advantage.

Bridge the gap to next level planning with advanced planning solutions

The good news is that companies can buy time, while getting access to the latest advanced analytics capabilities. Bridge the gap to next level planning instantly, by plugging-in proven ‘systems of innovation’ into your current APS and/or ERP system. Typical analytics that can be tapped into are advanced forecasting, inventory optimization, or supply chain data engineering (data mining to e.g. determine realistic lead times).

By connecting to this kind of managed services, planning performance gets an instant boost. It enables planners and the organization to get acquainted with next level planning capabilities. And delivers insights to specific future planning needs, to shape their future planning landscape at their own pace.

Learn more about our Planning Services! 

The post Legacy Advanced Planning Solutions (APS) need a boost appeared first on EyeOn.

Elanco launched a project to build a forecasting center of excellence. After assessing and developing a roadmap, EyeOn designed and implemented a new process which received board support. We helped Elanco prepare for data-driven demand planning. In addition to the new process, EyeOn was instrumental in creating a new organization which involved setting up and running a training program for a central analyst team in India.

Learn more about Planning Services! 

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