If, as supply chain practitioners, we all had the gift of foresight, supply chain risk management wouldn’t be an issue. We wouldn't worry about projecting future trends or how to manage consumer demand fluctuations, rising supply-side costs, and the respective impact on the bottom line. Unfortunately, the reality is today’s international supply chain is highly fragile and easily succumbs to market forces and macro and micro shifts – making forecasting a tricky, yet fundamental, part of business success. Most recently, U.S. importers have been exposed to trade wars, tariffs, and the pandemic that has affected every part of the global supply chain. But what if there was a way to better plan and forecast across your supply chain to help mitigate against issues like these? What if there was a way to plan ahead and manage your business operations with greater efficiency? This is where the power of first mile forecasting can help enterprises go from uncertainty and risk to clarity and control. Here are a couple of ways first mile planning and forecasting can help your business in the long run: Meet Wider Business Objectives You’ve likely already experienced how supply chain forecasting and planning can help business leaders make more informed decisions on growing and scaling their company. In the supply chain world, timing means everything, with a minor delay potentially having catastrophic repercussions further downstream—damaging both your brand image as well as impacting your bottom line. By understanding past order production, shipments, and sales metrics such as turnover rate, supplier lead times, and transit times, enterprises can reach the optimum equilibrium between speed to market and cost-saving measures. Helping to meet corporate goals and aligning to the wider company's vision. Forecasting methods typically fall into four buckets: moving average forecasting, exponential smoothing, auto-regressive integrated moving average, and multiple aggregation prediction. Depending on your goals and whether you need to track aspects such as seasonality or lag time, you can implement the right technique to support your business in both the short and long run. Make Future-Proof Investments Without a clear understanding of what's happening in your supply chain operations, it's virtually impossible to make strategic investments to improve how you bring your products to market and deliver exceptional customer service. The global supply chain operates on a circular basis, with past years' results impacting the plans and decisions for future products, shipments, and in-store or online stock. From raw product availability, to supplier performance, to booking and shipment level data, planning departments require real-time data at their fingertips to glean insights and make decisions that will impact their business for the coming year. Enterprises that invest in tools that can aggregate data and provide ways to cut and slice it into actionable insights will be the success stories rising out of the turmoil we’re currently witnessing. Predict and React to Market Fluctuations through Greater Resiliency Volatility and sudden changes in macro market conditions can affect businesses operating across virtually any industry. Forecasting is, therefore, more than just a one-off task ahead of the coming year; it's a continuous process, utilizing the latest intelligence to pivot and alter plans to ensure maximum success. By anticipating changes and reacting to them promptly and with a solid business plan, enterprises can better action mitigation strategies to minimize loss and reduce potential damage to their brand. For most businesses, cost control is critical to weather today’s storms–and those yet to come. Resilience and efficiency delivered through better planning, forecasting, and preparation must be instilled into the “new normal” for those who want to succeed. Intelligent investments made today will help to minimize costly disruptions further down the line. Mercado is an import order management system (iOMS) that connects and automates the global supply chain across the first mile (80%) by creating a digital order. So you can plan, buy, and move your products with ease. Discover more about how Mercado can meet your forecasting and planning needs at mercadolabs.com. Comments are closed.
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