Collaborative Demand Planning Prerequisites

The collaborative demand planning process is aimed at securing that the expectations to future sales are as accurate as possible taking into account all known market intelligence. These are some examples of market intelligence or sales activities:

  • Known promotions
  • Extension of sales forces
  • Demand shift
  • New Product Introductions (NPI)
  • Knowledge on competitors promotions.

It is critical for a collaborative forecasting process that it is done on a regular basis. There can be fewer updates, but it is vital for the performance of the supply chain that forecasts are revised regularly. Therefore, it is also important to have a process owner for this process. The process owner in this case, is the administrator who is also responsible for ensuring that data are synchronized with M3 Business Engine.

Hardware Prerequisites

These are the required hardware:

  • 2 PCs with M3 DMP Client application installed and operating on the same domain. M3 DMP Server must be installed on one PC.
  • The PC where M3 DMP Server and M3 DMP Client installed is the Administrators PC. In the General Settings on M3 DMP client, you must clear the Automatic default Scenario per Dataset in order to be able to make a consolidation of all forecasters changes.

Setting up system

To set up communication between M3 DMP and M3 BE or Local database, see these links:

  • Define Data Settings
  • Define Server Settings
  • Define Logging Settings
  • Define Basic M3 Interface Settings
  • Define Advanced M3 Interface Settings