Reaching Collaborative Consensus

This chapter explains how to reach one final Sales Forecast Proposal, which is consolidated and accepted for use throughout the supply chain. This is an iterative consensus-seeking process involving negotiation and collaboration between the administrator, the forecasters and the supplying units. The starting point is a Sales Forecast Proposal from the administrator and forecasters. This proposal is adjusted to reach a consensus between all forecast participants.

Outcome

A consolidated Sales Forecast Proposal that is accepted for use throughout the supply chain.

The consolidated Sales Forecast Proposal is ready to be exported to M3 Business Engine as an Updated Sales Budget.

Data import and any forecast activities performed in M3 DMP do not affect M3 BE. The M3 BE is only affected when exporting data from M3 DMP. See Exporting Consolidated Demand Plan Proposal.

Before Starting

If the Sales Forecast Proposal should be adjusted according to the capacity constraints in the supply chain, the result of supply chain planning in M3 SCP should be available. See Checking Capacity Availability.

Processes

The process of reaching a consolidated Sales Forecast Proposal is a collaborative consensus-seeking process between many parties. It is a highly flexible process, which can be structured and conducted in numerous ways using various communication channels and tools. The following description is a suggestion for an iterative process consisting of three main activities controlled by the administrator. In each iteration, a set of suggested changes is treated by a selected group of participants. The set of changes could be adjustments arising from the Capacity Adjusted Forecast or suggestions for opportunities from M3 SCP. See Checking Capacity Availability. Or it could be other suggestions from forecasting participants for adjustment of the current Demand Plan Proposal. The final outcome of this process is a consolidated Demand Plan Proposal comprising one scenario for each Dataset including all scenario parts that have been accepted.

Activity Description

  1. Distribute current Sales Forecast Proposal or suggested changes

    In this activity, the suggested changes to be negotiated are distributed to the forecasting participants. The distributed information could be the current Sales Forecast Proposal, suggestions displayed as changes in a worksheet, or just a specification of new suggestions. There are numerous ways to share this information (email, telephone and so on), but M3 DMP offers the following tools:

    • Suggested changes can be created in scenario parts linked to a separate scenario. In this way the suggestions to be negotiated can be viewed in a worksheet. See Create Scenario/Scenario Part/Sales Activity and Change Data Basic.
    • All information in a Version can be distributed to anyone running M3 DMP by saving and loading versions. See Save Version and Load Version.
    • Worksheets can be completely or partially copied into, for instance, a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The worksheet could be a view displaying the suggestions as changes in some scenario.
  2. Negotiate suggested changes

    In this activity, the suggested changes are accepted or declined by the participants on the basis of the distributed information. How this negotiation is conducted is different for each company and organization and is not supported by M3 DMP. The activity should conclude with a decision on whether to accept or decline the changes.

  3. Revise current Sales Forecast Proposal

    In this activity, the scenario parts are re-allocated to scenarios according to the decision in the previous activity. Scenario parts that are accepted are included in the scenarios that make up the Sales Forecast Proposal. Scenario parts that are declined are included in other scenarios or deleted. See Create Scenario/Scenario Part/Sales Activity and Delete Scenario Part.

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