Mastering your demand planning transformation: the expertise you need at every stage

By Erik de Vos

Transforming demand planning and forecasting setups is a challenge many organizations take on. Almost every company is currently evolving its demand planning processes and the underlying data and tooling approaches. However, these transformations often take longer than expected or fail to deliver the anticipated improvements in forecast quality. Among various reasons, having the right expertise and experience at the right moment in the transformation is crucial. Capability requirements are often overlooked, or we expect a single person to cover all aspects. A successful transformation is about doing the right thing at the right time, which requires specific expertise.

The challenge

Having the right transformation expertise, at the right time

Before diving into the expertise that makes a difference in a demand planning transformation, let’s first understand a typical transformation project. We generally see four stages in these type of projects: 

1. Analyzing and designing the process: Focus on what the future decision process should look like and how this translates into roles and responsibilities. 
2. From process design to data & tools: Connect the new process into the underlying data landscape and supporting systems. 
3. Implementation and training: Implement the new developments and train its users accordingly. 
4. Achieving steady-state: Aim for a steady-state situation within the new ways of working and build further on what has been established. 

Each stage requires specific expertise. Overall, we see three major blocks of expertise that overlap the transformation project stages. Design expertise is key at the start of the project. Technical development expertise and the ability to train people in new ways of working become important in stages two and three. Change and people management expertise are crucial during stages three and four.  

While it is not rocket science to understand what expertise is required at each stage, why do transformations fail? In practice, we tend to expect this expertise to reside in the same person or a small team. We want a “jack-of-all-trades” throughout the transformation project. Or we rely on a team without the right expertise to focus on delivering an MVP of what we need, leaving the more complex enhancements for later, with the risk of not delivering the game-changing elements at all. What if you had the right expertise at the right time instead?  

The service

Expert roles: expertise that drives transformation success

Where expertise as mentioned above already gives guidance, every stage will benefit from specific experience of demand planning set-ups. Let’s connect the overall expertise to specific experience and roles you should imagine throughout the demand planning transformation: 

• Design stages: Experience in design, challenging people and current practices, and making choices for the right demand planning setup is key. This includes designing around demand drivers, levels of aggregation for forecasting, and a smart-touch approach for demand planning. Without this experience, you may stick to familiar tools or design unnecessarily advanced setups that won’t be used. 

• Development and training: Experience in setting up the right demand data structures and flows, designing planning dashboards with a focus on exception-based planning with demand drivers, and tuning tool standards to specific business needs is crucial. Additionally, preparing for change involves organizing communication that connects demand planners with business stakeholders, supporting planners in transitioning from manual setups to advanced forecasting techniques, and bringing structure to the demand planner’s role. 

• New setup implementation: Driving ongoing learning from the demand cycle and forecast quality is essential. This includes reviewing forecasts, making demand review meetings more effective and data-driven, and identifying structural improvement potential in both the forecast and the demand process. 

This brings us to the roles we would expect in the different stages.  

• Business process and design roles: Connect external demand planning experience, relevant theoretical and practical knowledge to the demand planning design needed. Experienced in designing demand planning process, establishing the right forecasting roles, setting up connected processes delivering vital demand driver information and describing a demand planning data & tool landscape. 

• Technical expert roles: Design technical aspects for demand planning, including data design for transactional data, master data and demand drive data; including tool design with a forecast engine, enrichment set-ups and reporting set-ups; and applying smart-touch principles e.g. by applying machine learning techniques and demand planning alerting. 

• Soft skill roles: Connect with key players in the future demand planning setup towards go-live in the form of training and communication. Will drive the change planning and enable on solid connection before demand planning go-live between the project team and the people feeling the demand planning change. Focus on transition planning, learning approaches, feedback approaches connected to the demand planning cycle.  

• Post-go-live roles: A mix of listening and coaching roles to ensure new ways are adopted and technical roles to translate key learnings into quick fixes or value-adding changes in data and tools. Connect with all roles playing a role in demand planning from sales assistants over demand planners to management and establish demand planning change awareness and progress perception.  

• Project management roles: focus on managing the transformation project as 1 integrated approach, keeping an eye on key milestones in developing demand planning & forecasting like establishing a change in process & role maturity in phases and delivering data and tool design to support machine-based forecasting in combination with focused human enrichment & decision taking. 

As these roles expect very different experience and skills, it is wise to consider different people for each type of role.  

Appropriate for

The transformation role framework in practice

Let’s look at some projects where bringing in specific expertise as part of a larger transformation approach was crucial: 

1. Event and promotion planning expert: A business process expert brought in during the design phase to facilitate design discussions between the business user team and the trade promotion planning system vendor. This EyeOn expert co-drove the analysis and design of new ways of working with advanced tooling for promotion planning, ensuring timely go-live with a transparent MVP version of the new tool. 
2. Demand planning coach: Brought in at process go-live to coach the team from day one, ensuring personal connections and creating a team focused on adopting new ways of working. This coach helped get the demand planning cycle up and running, evaluated cycles, and installed forecast evaluation and exception-based thinking, gradually handing over to the demand planning leads. 
3. Data science technical experts: Brought in at tool go-live to tune new tools and build in-house data science capabilities in forecasting. This support evolved from discovering how forecasting would work with new tools, to iterative modeling, and to designing a robust forecast engine fully integrated into the tool landscape. Read all about it in the attached blog: How data science transformed forecasting at Kraft Heinz 
4. Demand planning project manager: An expert in planning system design and implementation, bringing hands-on experience in demand planning & forecasting from the beginning of the design phase to post go live. Covered the entire project from manual forecasting to system-enabled demand planning & forecasting. This expert was able to steer the project through critical milestones and challenge the team on decisions, risks and consequences for demand planning specific designs.  

In addition to these cases, numerous projects have benefited from bringing in experts with specific knowledge to complement internal project teams. Experienced demand planners to help develop new standards, forecast data science experts to train internal resources on advanced forecasting logics, and trainers with hands-on demand review experience to help planners develop more effective demand review approaches.

Results

Transform your forecasting approach with targeted expertise

Bringing demand planning and forecasting to new levels typically requires a comprehensive transformation approach. Often, an internal team is tasked with executing the transformation from start to finish. While it’s a strong choice to have an internal team lead the transformation, imagine the impact if this team could tap into specific expertise at critical moments. Design expertise at the start, development expertise when working on the details of data and tools, and soft skills when the transformation needs to be integrated into the organization, can make a significant difference. By leveraging the right expertise at the right time, companies can ensure a smoother, more effective transformation process, ultimately achieving the desired improvements in forecast quality and overall efficiency. 

To ensure the success of your demand planning transformation, you need to bring in the right expertise at the right time. Don’t let your internal team go at it alone — bring in specialists to guide you through each stage and deliver the impactful results your organization needs.  

Do you have a clear understanding of how ready your organization is to move to the next level of forecasting? Our forecasting assessment can help you determine your current level of readiness for advanced forecasting and understand the critical next steps you need to take. And it only takes you 10 minutes. Get started here.