'Demand Better' Eliminates Gaps In Supply Chain

Compiled ByDeborah Austin Demand Better -- a just-launched multi-pronged campaign from DemandTec -- offers full rollout of new software for managing demand levers of price, promotion, product assortment and placement. Included are customer seminars and webcasts implementing principles defined by the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, which recently cited demand-based management (DBM) as the next competitive battleground in supply-chain management. DemandTec, San Francisco, provides DBM software for retailers and manufacturers. The firm designed its Demand Science Platform software to meet criteria of 10 DBM principles outlined by Stanford professor Hau Lee in white paper "Ultimate Enterprise Value Creation Using Demand Based Management." Lee says demand models must be created at the consumer level, interaction effects between items modeled explicitly and supply-chain costs captured using activity-based costing.