Consumer Driven Planning for Microsoft Dynamics AX

Identifying market trends is essential to good demand planning and peak performance in the manufacturing and retail industries. Consumer Driven Planning for Microsoft Dynamics AX provides insight into demand trends, helps you align your internal processes and policies around accurate demand forecasts, and enables you to shape customer demand with effective promotions and campaigns. By taking advantage of this powerful planning and optimization software, fully integrated into your business management solution, you can quickly transform your business into a competitive demand-driven enterprise.

Consumer Driven Planning for Microsoft Dynamics AX is built on the Microsoft platform. With Consumer Driven Planning for Microsoft Dynamics AX, you can:

•	Develop detailed sales budgets—right down to the product and account level
•	Create reliable sales forecasts
•	Plan for every shift in channel requirements
•	Increase sell-outs with strategic promotional campaigns
•	Reduce lost sales by optimizing inventory levels along the entire distribution chain and replenishing stocks in a timely manner

Manage with insight

Trace expected sales to actual sales and forecast future sales while taking into account seasonal and promotional effects up to the daily level. Use simulations, demand models, and error analysis to determine optimal stock levels for better profit and operations margins.

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Increase business efficiency

Collaborate across business functions to consolidate sales information, establish a feasible sales budget, align sales and marketing strategies, and standardize operational processes.

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Help ensure business agility

Use detailed demand information to accurately anticipate, plan for, and respond to orders. Full integration of real-time sales and operational information across the organization reduces errors in forecasting and helps ensure timely response to demand.

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Drive sales

Control and direct market demand and meet margin objectives through effective promotions. Increase capacity to evaluate product turnover in response to campaigns and align production and inventory accordingly.

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Maximize service levels

Increase order fill rates, reduce risk of stockout or inventory excess, and enhance overall responsiveness to customers with greater visibility into and control over the supply chain.

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Features overview

Feature	Description and benefit
Hierarchical, configurable market modeling	Generate dynamic demand plans using hierarchical, multidimensional demand data structures. Define the products, markets, and time periods for your business; then create detailed hierarchies for each dimension so you can model demand curves, create simulation scenarios, and forecast demand quantities at any aggregation level.
Sales budgeting	Work collaboratively across functions to establish sales objectives and analyze performance through top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out data models. Identify quantitative or qualitative targets for future sales. Define sales budgets at varying levels of detail, including region, channel, account, product line, or industry.
Sales forecasting	Trace expected sales to actual sales and use sophisticated, industry-specific algorithms to forecast future demand. Evaluate the impact of different forecasting strategies using simulation tools and measure the error and accuracy of your forecasts periodically.
Promotion planning	Identify the best promotional events for multiple products across multiple channels by analyzing demand patterns. Coordinate promotional activities bi-directionally across the supply chain. Measure quantitatively the expected and actual effect of promotions on sales. Catalog your promotional initiatives and their effects.
Assortment and category planning	Allocate the right mix of products to the distribution network and carry out intelligent allocations of stock keeping units (SKUs) to channels and stores. Define assortments according to seasonal targets, taking into account sales, margins, stock rotation, and constraints such as display space and allocation rules. Control in-season SKUs by detecting bestsellers, low sellers, and overall demand changes.
Inventory planning and stock optimization	Analyze lead times, costs, service levels, and demand for inventory to help ensure optimum product allocation across the supply chain. Reduce overall inventories while matching customer service levels and minimizing the risk of stockout.
Replenishment planning/sales and operations planning	Define replenishment plans for distribution centers while taking into account demand, logistics rules, and the impact of different inventory policies on service levels.
Analytics	Keep business process indicators such as scorecards and key performance indicators under control. Empower specialized analyses. Enable personalized reporting.

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Next steps

•	Find out more about Microsoft Dynamics AX.
•	Contact your local Microsoft partner. Need help finding a local Microsoft partner? Contact Microsoft to request more information.

Note

Note that industry-builder solutions will become available for different industries and different regions over time, and some may not be available in all regions. If you have questions about solutions for a specific industry and region, please contact us.

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