Collaborative Flowcasting

Flowcasting. Not forecasting. What's the difference? Traditional forecasting and demand planning systems have tackled the retail supply chain from the wrong angle – trying to forecast downward from manufacturing to distribution, never getting beyond shipments out of the distribution centers. RedPrairie E²e™ Collaborative Flowcasting focuses on store level data, or "demand sensing" inventory strategies, starting with item level information and "flowing" that up through the supply chain to drive all other activities, from the store shelf to manufacturing plants and raw material suppliers.

Because Collaborative Flowcasting is based on actual store level item demand and can track the huge volume of store data, it provides manufacturers, retailers, operations executive, brand category managers, and suppliers a more accurate look at consumer demand. What are the benefits of Collaborative Flowcasting?

Manufacturers need to increase their performance to their key retailers, or they risk losing their competitive advantage with that retailer.

Retailers are constantly looking for ways to improve the performance of their suppliers - reducing out-of-stocks, increasing inventory turns, and improving measurement of cash flow days.

Collaborative Flowcasting results include:

Lower safety stocks – Flowcasting provides the ability to predict retailer orders with their manufacturing suppliers one month into the future

Reduced out-of-stocks – If point-of-sale results on any given day are higher than expected, the demand chain automatically reacts. One retailer reduced distribution center out-of-stocks 86 percent in the last holiday season using Flowcasting.

Improved labor productivity – Since trading partners are able to achieve a high level of collaboration, they are able to better analyze future promotions, changes in display settings, and other common initiatives. Labor productivity has been shown to improve by as much as 30 percent with Flowcasting.

Collaborative Flowcasting – an important part of the RedPrairie solution suite

The combination of Collaborative Flowcasting with RedPrairie's workforce, inventory, and transportation solutions, means companies can more efficiently direct the flow of goods and people throughout the replenishment process as well as better calculate the costs at each level so intelligent distribution decisions can be made.

E²e™ Collaborative Flowcasting leverages the RedPrairie Integration backbone to expedite integration with the rest of the RedPrairie application portfolio. In addition the RedPrairie E²e™ Business Process Platform is used to further automate complex business process flows.