Supply chain management: Kinaxis unveils RapidResponse for Demand Management

Kinaxis Inc ., a supplier of software that enables companies to respond quickly to daily changes inside the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) horizon, has announced a new solution specifically to address issues related to demand management.The new solution—called RapidResponse for Demand Management—is purpose-built for the unique challenges faced by sales, customer service, and demand management organizations as they respond to daily, unexpected change while balancing customer satisfaction and operations performance objectives, the company says.When combined with the existing RapidResponse for Manufacturing solution, the integrated end-to-end RapidResponse service provides supply chain teams the tools for risk tradeoff from the individual order or forecast change down to the component supply level.Despite large investments in Demand Planning, Supply Chain Planning and traditional S&OP tools, decision-makers still often rely on manual efforts, complicated spreadsheets, and other makeshift measures. The S&OP process produces a plan that organizations have difficulty with given the number of daily changes that occur inside the planning horizon. Customer-focused companies have quickly realized they can’t “plan” their customers.Kinaxis says it is addressing these challenges by empowering front-line decision makers to quickly sense demand and supply misalignments and initiate more profitable responses by shaping demand and rapidly allocating finished goods supply accordingly. With RapidResponse for Demand Management, action teams utilize personal alerting, multi-enterprise visibility, collaborative “what-if” analysis and rapid decision support to achieve superior customer service and revenue attainment.“Most companies are managing demand response across their fulfillment networks by brute force with poor results,” says Douglas Colbeth, chairman and CEO of Kinaxis. “Achieving excellence in responding to changing customer demands has become the number one challenge facing enterprises today. Solving the response management need in demand management and fulfillment operations represents the largest opportunity for companies to increase customer satisfaction, enhance margins, and attain more predictable revenue across the entire value chain. Traditional Planning tools are all about what you hope for—RapidResponse enables companies to deal with reality.”Extending the Kinaxis Response Management solution to focus on demand management business challenges has been highly customer-driven. Kinaxis customers have provided strong validation of the distinct needs of the demand management user community and the urgent requirement for a strategic solution to address them. Qualcomm “At Qualcomm, our management and sales operations use RapidResponse to dynamically align supply and demand in the face of continually changing circumstances and growing demand,” says Lisa Henderson, senior director of IT. Toshiba Europe GmbH “Toshiba Europe has used RapidResponse to improve its purchasing, sales and inventory (PSI) process,” says Thomas Kossmehl, senior expert, IS Division. “Using RapidResponse, we now have a consistent, succinct PSI process that dramatically enhances our ability to achieve our desired results. With reliable demand and supply data consolidated in one place, we spend significantly less time on data gathering and more time on analysis and decision-making—which

Do you have experience and expertise with the topics mentioned in this content? You should consider contributing to our WTWH Media editorial team and getting the recognition you and your company deserve. Click here to start this process.