STUDENTS' CORNER - 128

Demand-driven planning is the first strategy in effective supply chain management.

Effective and efficient sale of a product characterizes the spirit of successful marketing. It means you should have almost a correct estimate of demand for your product. Your supply-chain management therefore critically depends on right assessment of demand for your product and monitoring the entire process upto the right distribution of the product to your valued customer. This underscores the point that your planning first of all must be demand-driven which consequently takes you on to the right plan of action, that is, your business operating model or style.

Of course, there are ways and means of assessing the demand in the market and in fact you must be familiar with all those measures. In the process of assessing the demand, another integral and important fact plays a vital role in the process: knowledge of possible threats to the market that end up in disruption of the normal activities. You must take into account the challenging events that do happen beyond your control such as enormously shaking political scenario that includes unexpected turn of events, say civil war or even the change of government with radically different policies, such as natural calamities in the form of fire, earthquakes and floods. All these incidences do affect market dynamics pulling down the demand of a product or pushing up the demand of a product. This sensitive understanding of the market must be the underlying principle governing the process of the demand assessment.

Indeed, Himalayan development in technology must be exploited to the full so that there is no lack of vital information required for decision-making.  You can have exact information about your inventory, your products can be tracked in transit and even you can manage to get feedback on your product and service.  With digitalization, the business operations can be efficiently managed. When all is said and done, you need to have business insights.  Again, it only implies you must be alert to the vibrant market dynamics. That is you should be able to know when your product reaches the decline stage and you should be ready with an alternative to be in the market to sustain yourself.

The first strategy in your supply-chain management is meticulously planned demand- based marketing engagement.

In our next session, we shall see some other strategy.