Inform ERP’s Newish Features for Demand Management

Welcome back to the final installment of the DDI System blog series. Over the past several weeks, we’ve explored many of the ways Inform ERP simplifies demand management, streamlines purchasing, and helps you run a more efficient business. Today, we’re diving into some relatively new, yet incredibly useful features for demand management that you may not know about.

These features include:

Customizing forecast parameters at the warehouse level
Excluding certain forecast formulas from being used
Excluding demand for a customer or ship-to record

Let’s unpack these features and see how they can make a big impact on your operations.

The “Newish” Features in Demand Management

We’re calling these features “newish” since they’ve been introduced in recent versions of Inform ERP, but not necessarily in the latest major releases. If you’ve been a long-time user of tools like Projected Purchase Orders, these features are worth noting!

Customize Forecast Parameters at the Warehouse Level

When Inform ERP first launched, forecast parameters were applied company wide. This meant every warehouse in your database had the same forecasting rules, regardless of differing inventory needs.

Now, you can customize forecast parameters at the warehouse level. It allows you to fine-tune your forecasting to reflect each warehouse’s unique inventory profile, ensuring accuracy and avoiding unnecessary purchases.

Exclude Certain Forecast Formulas from Being Used

Early on, Inform ERP automatically assigned forecast formulas to products based on the types of demand, which we talked about in one of our earlier blogs. This created challenges for businesses that didn’t carry or have seasonal products, as we didn’t have any way to stop the system from assigning specific formulas to specific items.

Inform ERP now allows you to exclude certain forecast formulas from being applied to your inventory. You’ll see a list of all available formulas within the forecast parameters. Simply uncheck the formulas you don’t want the system to assign. Inform ERP won’t consider assigning the specific formula to your products.

Exclude Demand for a Customer or Ship-To Record

The last feature we want to highlight is the ability to exclude demand for a customer or ship-to record. Imagine you had a really large customer who primarily purchased 10 of your high-volume products that is no longer doing business with you.

Without this feature, Inform ERP might still forecast demand for those products based on the customer’s previous purchase history. You can check a box in the Customer Record in the General tab or directly on the Ship-To Record to turn this feature on. It will exclude that customer’s historical demand from your forecasting calculations and automatically adjust demand for those products. This helps you avoid over-purchasing and improve inventory accuracy.

These features can help you ensure forecasting aligns with your specific operational needs, avoid unnecessary purchases, and increase efficiency by simplifying the demand process. While seemingly small, they pack a big punch when it comes to optimizing your forecasting and purchasing workflows.

Thank You for Following our DDI System Blog Series!

We want to thank you for joining us on this journey through the powerful features of Inform ERP. Our goal has been to help you gain deeper insights into our distribution ERP so you can stock more effectively, minimize deadstock, and reduce purchasing time.

If you missed any of our previous blogs, check them out below.

Want to learn more about Inform ERP? Schedule a demo with our knowledgeable team to see how our distribution ERP can transform your operations!