Replace Excel Spreadsheets in the age of Forecasting/Planning software

Chances are, if you own a business, you use Excel in some part of that business. Every computer device, laptop, and mobile device comes with some sort of spreadsheet feature, making it one of the most used type of app in business. Spreadsheets are mostly used for calculations, data analysis, data entry, preparing graphs/charts/presentations, sorting and storing data, demand planning and management, calculating payroll and tax, forecasting future performance, accounting/budgeting, and much more.

In the eyes of most, spreadsheets present an incredibly user-friendly interface with essential features that are ultimately easy to learn. Because of the large user-base, one can also use information available online to learn and explore more about them. Experienced users can use advanced features such as conditional formatting, creating a budget, calculating revenue, macros, and more.

Why have excel spreadsheets become obsolete?

So, in lieu of all this, why are spreadsheets becoming obsolete? Previously, spreadsheets were an outstanding for business analytics and basic reporting. Yet, spreadsheets have various restrictions and limitations that hamper their usefulness in processes such as demand planning. They require an extensive knowledge of the product and custom usage while limiting the number of records that can be used. Above all, spreadsheets are not supportive of online collaborative work. A spreadsheet can be edited by one user, which becomes time-consuming if it requires multiple user's inputs.

Handling live data with spreadsheets becomes difficult

Spreadsheets are not scalable in this growing digital economy where live data streams into data warehouses by the second from smartphones, online websites, and universal gadgets embedded via the internet. The higher the data volume, the slower the spreadsheet operations are, presenting more opportunities for the data to become corrupted.

Spreadsheets are hard to share

They also create a tremendous amount of information that cannot be quickly accessed or shared across the organization. Combining multiple spreadsheet files into a compressed information file is a time-consuming and challenging process. The more spreadsheets you have, the bigger they are, and the more likely they are to have human mistakes, resulting in misreporting.

No real-time decision making

Spreadsheets are unable to support decision making in real-time due to outdated, inaccurate data. It’s time-consuming to collect the most updated information from other users and update the info. In many cases, spreadsheets are vulnerable to manipulations due to an inherent lack of management.

Knowing when it's time to find a replacement for Spreadsheet

Over 80% of demand planners use Excel spreadsheets as their tool for demand planning. Given the technological advancements society has made over the past 5-10 years, this seems illogical. As a demand planner, you should ask yourself the following:

• Do your spreadsheet cell labels have more characters than the license plate on your vehicle?
• Are you able to scale date live and have other people on your team edit live?
• Is it getting more challenging to find empty cells as you run out of rows and columns?
• Are you terrified during business meetings that your excel spreadsheet results are not the same as others, even if you used the same data sources?

If you’ve experience any of these situations described above, you are indirectly suffering from demand planner “spreadsheet overload”. A healthy and well-rounded demand planning and forecasting software, also known as demand management software, is the cure to your spreadsheet dependency. The best way to achieve this is to use the best demand planning tool available on the market.

Why Change Now?

Digitalization is making the supply chain move faster, more intelligent, more connected, and independent. Forward-thinking C-level decision-makers offer companies an opportunity to adopt this type of digital ecosystem, evolving strategic associates with their customer needs. The convergence of three factors aids in this process:

• Better computing power than ever before
• Generous and abundant data that is being tracked
• The availability of analytics and algorithms, mainly with web-based, open-source platforms.

All of this is making everyone apply fine-tuned analytics to everything. More and more business analysts adopt advanced analytics and demand planning software, demand management software, and forecasting software for the most accurate predictions.

Businesses are looking to invest in advanced demand planning and forecasting software, which allows them to measure growth and determine if they’re on track to generate profit and revenue without complicated excel spreadsheets. As data collection and analytics software, applications, and solutions have evolved to be more accessible and useful, they have also become more comfortable for companies to justify the cost of with excellent ROI’s. For many businesses, data management technology has increased so fast that the challenges coming across are not about getting the budget but how to make proper use of the data collected. Spreadsheets are simply not scalable to handle live actualization of data.

Over a few decades, a wide variety of other, non-spreadsheet-based systems, such as, demand forecasting software, demand planning tools, demand management software applications, demand planning software, and similar solutions have become available to handle big data collected from an increasing number of data sources.

Advanced Demand Planning Technology is available now

New innovative solutions powered by cutting-edge analytics streamline data management. These new, intelligent planning solutions allow their users to:

• Enhance sell-through rates by accessing and modeling downstream data to predict consumer demand better. This uses consumption-based forecasting to shape shipments based on the point of sale or sell-out demand. This results in more accurate shipment plans.
• Enhance planning operation efficiency using forecasting algorithms and formulas to provide demand planners with a digital aid to improve their forecast value add (FVA). This digital helper guides demand planners up/down the business hierarchy to manage outbalance by exception, thereby reducing errors and planning efforts.
• Ease of execution, development, and arrangement of analytic workflows. Advanced techniques and plans with unique algorithms solve complex demand forecasting problems faster.
• The main motto is to provide an environment that encourages adoption and introduces an automated demand planning process that helps manage demand planning by exceptions. No graph, tables, or spreadsheet cell calculations needed.

If your business is affected due to the use of excel spreadsheets, it's time to replace your traditional active metrics with demand planning and forecasting software. Along with predicting sales, demand management software synchronizes the supply chain management process.

Avercast has affected the forecasting industry by forging 250+ algorithms to forecast accurate demand. Learn more about the best demand planning software and how it can help your business to establish data-driven demand planning.

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