Creating Demand Plan Proposal

Before Starting

All forecasters must have made their Market Forecast Proposal available for the current forecasting cycle to the administrator.  See Performing Market Forecasting.

Follow These Steps

This process is an iterative process, except for the first step. The following activities describe the basic activities that must be performed, but the sequence and number of iterations can vary.

1. Check Market Forecast Proposals

   In this activity the administrator checks that all forecasters have returned a Market Forecast Proposal. If some forecasters have returned their Market Forecast Proposal as compressed files, these are loaded into the Version.

2. Define Favorite Views

   To analyze the Market Forecast Proposals, the administrator needs appropriate Favorite Views. These are defined in this activity. Usually advanced Favorite Views are needed to display more than one Dataset and scenario at the same time. See Generating Forecast Packages and About filters.

3. Analyze, adjust and validate Market Forecast Proposals

   In this activity, the administrator decides which scenario parts from the Market Forecast Proposals that should be included in the Sales Forecast Proposal. The administrator needs to analyze the changes from the Market Forecast Proposals and possibly add new changes. See Performing Market Forecasting. The outcome of this activity is that the administrator has decided which scenario parts to include in the Sales Forecast Proposal.

4. Combine into Sales Forecast Proposal

   In this activity, the Sales Forecast Proposal is created. The proposal comprises of all scenarios. These scenarios are composed of those scenario parts where all changes have been validated and accepted by the administrator and the forecasters to make up the Sales Forecast Proposal. See Create Scenario Part and Attach/Detach Sales Activity. The combined Sales Forecast Proposal can be displayed using an advanced Favorite View. All the required Datasets are included and the scenarios are linked to their respective Dataset.

Outcome

A Sales Forecast Proposal is accepted and confirmed by the administrator and the forecasters. The proposal comprises of all scenario parts that have been accepted to make up the Demand Plan Proposal.

The Sales Forecast Proposal is consolidated in the consensus-seeking process of agreeing on one Updated Sales Budget/Sales Forecast throughout the supply chain.

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