As a cost-effective and comprehensive ERP solution, Sage X3 helps businesses become more efficient and flexible, providing them with the business features they need to stay compliant, adapt to changing market conditions and grow their bottom lines. NexTec Group has been helping businesses implement Sage X3 since the product was introduced and configuring Sage X3 to fit the needs of specific industries, such as the cannabis industry, the food and beverage industry and the manufacturing industry.
Recently, NexTec developed new powerful features: Demand Management and Forecasting. Today, we’ll examine these new features and reveal how they help our customers meet their ever-changing needs in highly regulated industries.
Forecasting and Demand Management
Before diving into these new features, let’s first define what demand management and forecasting are and what they do.
Simply put, forecasting is predicting future needs based on past behavior, data and analytical insights. Demand management is a method of planning for and meeting future product and service demand.
According to Techopedia, the advantages of utilizing demand management include:
- Screening the growth and decline of the quantity of transactions between suppliers
- Monitoring all related expenditures
- Illustrating the reasoning behind continuing to strengthen supplier relationships, both internally and externally
These and other demand management benefits help businesses in every industry optimize resources, lower costs and reduce waste. But keep in mind that every business is different and has differing requirements. Each business must evaluate its own operations and assess its customers’ needs in order to devise a personalized forecast and demand management plan.
New Demand Management and Forecasting Features
NexTec’s new Demand Management and Forecasting features build upon the existing demand management and forecasting capabilities already provided by Sage X3.
With the new demand management features, users can capture historical data (or their demand history), and in doing so, consider several factors that may skew it. For example, lost sales due to insufficient inventory do not automatically appear in a demand history of orders, thus these lost sales do not get factored into the forecast. This means that businesses are unaware of the issue and do not take proactive measures (e.g., producing more product for specific lost sales) to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Another factor that can distort demand history are unusual events, such as a natural disaster, new production introduction, or the opening of a new facility. These events produce artificial highs and lows in demand, and if a business cannot edit this information out of their system, then an inaccurate forecast results.
Additionally, for businesses to have a clear picture of their demand history, they need to monitor sales in the past. They must also have access to real order data over an extended period of time.
The new demand management features allow businesses to import historical data from other applications and capture past and current data. Once they have this all-important data, they can edit it, view it in a graphical format and use it to create solid forecasts.
On top of this, the new forecasting feature expands the base forecasting functionality already provided by Sage X3. For example, users can already import a forecast from an external source, enter values and have it applied over a number of periods. They can manually maintain or adjust a forecast, as well.
Now, users can use advanced or simple calculation methods to determine trends and calculate forecasts that account for seasonality and allow them to apply a percentage to the previous year’s values based on high-level business projections. Additionally, users can:
- Calculate individual products or SKUs in real time with single-screen results
- Calculate batches of products or SKUs on either weekly or monthly bases
- Allow for manual updates to a forecast, capture a reason code (for reference now and in the future) and maintain this adjustment through recalculations
- Layer market intelligence into the forecast for exceptions (e.g., special promotions to drive volume and sales), which allows businesses to ensure enough product is available to support it
Together, these new features are the tools businesses in today’s volatile economy need so that they can adjust their demand according to real, up-to-date data and plan intelligently for the future.
Facing the Future with NexTec and Sage X3
Here at NexTec, we’re continuing to work hard to supply our user community with innovative, value-added features that meet the needs of businesses across industries.
Pure Greens, a provider of OEM cannabis and cannabis-based products, implemented NexTec’s CannaBusiness ERP, which is built in Sage X3, to replace its disparate homegrown solutions.
“NexTec Group has expert knowledge of the cannabis industry and encyclopedic knowledge of Sage X3, its capabilities and history,” Stoudenmire says in the company’s CannaBusiness ERP Customer Story. He notes that Pure Green’s unique requirements have been challenging but that NexTec “has always been very responsive with solutions.”
Stoudenmire and his team now have complete visibility into—and control over—the business. Says Stoudenmire,
“One of the biggest changes for me is a consolidated view of all the moving parts of our organization so that I have the ability to look out in front of the bus and see what’s coming. It’s quality control overall, knowing statistically what’s happening, knowing what’s failing, where and why. CannaBusiness ERP gives me a 360-degree view of things.”
-Sterling Stoudenmire, President and CEO, Pure Greens
He adds, “Understanding our inputs, what are costs and our outputs, what works, what doesn’t, that’s where CannaBusiness ERP becomes a central conduit.”
Other companies in the cannabis, food and beverage or manufacturing industry can experience the same visibility, operational insight and forecasting abilities Pure Greens is now enjoying when they turn to NexTec and Sage X3.
To learn more about the new features discussed today, check out the following articles:
FoodBusiness ERP 2022 R4 Release: Demand Management and Forecasting
CannaBusiness ERP 2022 R4 ReleaseAnd to learn more about how NexTec consultants can help transform businesses with technology designed for their specific needs, contact our team today. We’d love to chat.