DemandLink
Demand Planning through Cutting-Edge Technology

A typical retailer, today, struggles to display the right products on the shelves because of the challenge of matching terabytes of streaming transaction data with real-time factors that drive demand. The retail industry requires an innovative demand planning and forecasting solution to efficiently manage their products, view business performance, and achieve their goals. Built by a team with decades of experience in demand planning, forecasting, and replenishment services for seasonal and perishable goods, DemandLink is helping retail companies access and implement more accurate forecasts. The company provides next-generation demand planning, replenishment solutions, and a full suite of BI tools for both seasonal and perishable goods to scale and analyze data by leveraging the power of the cloud, machine learning, and cutting-edge web-based tools.

DemandLink’s solution is tailored to target the product lines of retailers. The solution helps companies prepare an extensive range of in-store promotions and presentations, and provides demographic data that is incorporated into the forecast and remains visible to analysts. It achieves higher accuracy than its closest competitors by comparing the performance for upcoming events with its vast, up-to-date data library. “Besides, the solution provides greater visibility into plan implementation and product performance while improving communication between vendors, retailers, and analysts,” says John Garren, CEO, DemandLink.

Additionally, the solution analyzes the market and highlights the key aspects that drive product demand. With an intuitive user interface, the solution delivers relevant information such as price sensitivity that will be integrated into the replenishment suggestions, which analysts can use to manipulate the market performance of their products.

With DemandLink, retailers can calibrate replenishment levels and drill down into hundreds of key factors including weather forecasts, consumer demographics, arrival timing and freshness of each product, and the pricing, presence, and performance of substitute products available in the store. Moreover, the company provides a unique scorecarding solution that analyzes the performance of forecasting in real time and relays critical information to the customer. Further, cutting-edge BI tools are provided for customers to easily identify wins and losses in shelf management.

Besides, the solution has successfully improved communication by providing all-way visibility to product performance and plan implementation between vendors, retailers, and analysts

DemandLink has been assisting some of the largest retail chains—including WalMart, Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Dollar General—to make informed decisions for better shelf management. In one instance, a large retail company was facing inaccurate forecasting problem. Aiming to achieve a 10 percent increase in realized sales for their products, the company implemented DemandLink’s forecasting solution in a selected test region and monitored against a comparable control market. In the first year, test market achieved a 26 percent increase in realized sales and the gains were retained over the next two years. Using the solution, the retailer could collaborate with vendors to adjust replenishment levels and timing which improved their productivity.

DemandLink is driven by a team that conducts original research and even publishes papers. This has been a key driver of the spirit of technology innovation that keeps them miles ahead of their competitors. The seasoned development and management staff continues to deliver cutting-edge products. The company skillfully leverages their technology accomplishments to improve their product offerings and deliver more significant results for retail customers. “We have some new findings in artificial neural networks—an area of machine learning—and product clustering that will enable us to analyze and forecast even more accurately,” says Robin Cross, Research Director, DemandLink. The company employs a diversified team from the supply chain and technology arena that understands the retail market. DemandLink also provide a recruitment program that creates a platform for young developers, recent graduates, and postgraduates to advance their research and build more accurate and actionable retail solutions.