The forecasts Dynamics 365 currently produces can only help with specific demand needs. In general, while Business Central forecasting does help you understand demand over a specific period, it isn’t naturally inventory-oriented. In fact, Microsoft gives the following warning on their Supply Chain Management forecasting page:
D365 SCM “might not be the best fit for customers in industries such as commerce, wholesale, warehousing, transportation, or other professional services.”
There’s a gap in Dynamics between inventory management and demand forecasting. Dynamics 365 isn’t purposefully designed to manage inventory forecasting: it specifically tackles demand-side forecasting for manufacturers.
complements D365 Business Central.
Our inventory forecasting solution naturally integrates with D365 SCM, and it can use your SCM data to generate rich and accurate inventory forecasts across a variety of scenarios. We’ve tested StockIQ against billions of instances, and it’s capable of generating world-class forecasts that help you understand the true context of your inventory across many buckets, including:
- Disruption planning: If COVID-19 taught us anything, it’s that we need to be prepared for disruption. And this disruption comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. of senior execs expect supply chain risks to increase year-over-year for the near future. Acute climate events have .
- : Promotions can quickly throw a wrench in existing forecasts, especially if those forecasts don’t account for ad-hoc outliers. When these promotional events happen — which rapidly increase demand across a specific group of items — it can skew your forecasts and eat away at your overall accuracy. Worse yet, this skew can impact your downstream inventory requirements, so promotions have presented a tangible threat to traditional forecasting models. With StockIQ, you can scan your past promotions to predict demand based on those specific promotional time periods. Instead of skewing your entire forecasting, StockIQ helps you prepare for your promotion while keeping downstream inventory requirements steady through the storm.
- New part planning: Another disruption-centric component of forecasting is new part planning. Introducing new parts to your predictive models can throw them off. StockIQ provides a unique workflow for new part planning that helps you naturally integrate these parts into your forecasts without skewing your model.
StockIQ was purpose-built for manufacturers and distributors. Our solution is inventory-centric, and we rally around inventory-driven forecasting and analysis.
Find Value in Inventory Management
Every stock out, dead inventory, excess, and expiration represent wasted capital. Supply chain managers need a seamless way to instantly predict inventory demands, revise safety stock requirements, and reorganize distribution models to account for changes in the demand-side. We can help. At StockIQ, we help distributors make no-regret decisions based on the best available data and prediction models. Our solution can instantly integrate with Business Central to generate smart, inventory-driven models. Let’s build resilient and predictable supply chains — together. to learn more.
