库存优化如何帮助您的企业在这个季节赚取更多现金

This is the fourth article in a series of blogs that discuss how businesses can leverage technology across the entire value chain. The first three installments can be found in the Anaplan.com blog:

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Part one: How should my organization approach Connected Planning?

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Part two: Revenue operations: Five considerations to help align planning across sales, marketing, and customer success

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Part three: Align operating expenditures with strategy, manage costs, and maximize spend

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“It’s the most wonderful time of the year” is an expression heard on repeat during the holiday season. As revelers plan for parties and shop for gifts, many organizations spend countless cycles ensuring that they have their inventory right for shoppers: the right amounts at the right time in the right location and at the right price. All of this is to optimize their ability to convert that inventory to cash and drive profit for the organization. For planners, this time of year is often accompanied by angst about whether all of their inventory planning was correct and about its critical impact on the finances of the organization—and it can be less than wonderful.

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This angst isn’t unfounded. Most organizations find it difficult to align their sales forecasting and demand planning processes, let alone leverage a consensus plan to drive supply and fulfillment forecasts. Having that information inform the cash flow forecast is an even bigger stretch. These processes typically involve a combination of legacy systems, point solutions, and countless spreadsheets. Teams are siloed and interaction is limited at best. Collaboration and consensus are more an afterthought than a reality as most planners are working with outdated information. They’re doing their best to react to a change or request versus proactively evaluating various scenarios and possibilities.

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Connecting these processes using a cloud-based Connected Planning platform like Anaplan provides planners—whether they sit in sales, supply chain, or finance—with visibility to their piece of the puzzle. They could understand where their inventory is sitting in the value chain, ensure that it’s aligned to sales forecasts, and proactively negotiate with suppliers for maximizing margins. Optimizing inventory has an immediate efficiency impact, improves cash flow, and drives organizational value.

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Let’s say you are in charge of inventory planning for an international retailer. You have several hundred stores, tens of thousands of SKUs, and dozens of promotions occurring across your business in the weeks leading up to December 25. Now imagine that a massive and unexpected blizzard hits the Midwest and Northeast U.S., affecting both deliveries and foot traffic at your stores. With a traditional supply chain planning approach, adjusting your plans, uncovering gaps, and developing scenarios to address the modified forecast would take numerous planners many days to model—time that is already in short supply during the holiday season. With a unified planning approach in which supply chain shares information and scenarios with finance and sales, all of these parties could share information much more quickly and efficiently and collaborate on a revised forecast while keeping business objectives in mind.

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Learn how Carter’s removed four to six days of inventory from its supply chain.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlYeyQhizeI

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Increasingly, functional leaders recognize the need to align these processes and create a unified plan from which to make decisions and drive growth. Functional partnership and data handshakes are critical and a cornerstone of transformational change. These organizations are removing days from inventory and drastically improving performance; and finding success in this most wonderful time of the year.

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Wishing you peace, joy, and planning success this holiday season.

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本文是讨论企业如何在整个价值链中利用技术的系列博客的第四篇文章。前三期可以在anplan.com的博客上找到:

第一部分:我的组织应该如何进行互联规划?

第二部分:收入运营:五个注意事项，以帮助协调跨销售，营销和客户成功的计划

第三部分:将运营支出与战略保持一致，管理成本，并使支出最大化

“这是一年中最美好的时光”这句话在节日期间被反复听到。当狂欢者计划派对和购买礼物时，许多组织花费了无数个周期来确保他们有适合购物者的库存:在合适的时间、合适的地点、合适的价格、合适的数量。所有这些都是为了优化他们将库存转化为现金的能力，并为组织带来利润。对于计划人员来说，每年的这个时候往往伴随着焦虑，担心他们所有的库存计划是否正确，以及它对组织财务的关键影响——这可能不太好。

这种焦虑并非没有根据。大多数组织发现很难将他们的销售预测和需求计划过程结合起来，更不用说利用一致的计划来驱动供应和实现预测了。让这些信息用于现金流预测则是一个更大的挑战。这些过程通常涉及遗留系统、点解决方案和无数电子表格的组合。团队是孤立的，相互作用是有限的。协作和共识更多的是事后的想法，而不是现实，因为大多数规划者都在使用过时的信息。他们正在尽最大努力对变化或请求做出反应，而不是主动评估各种情况和可能性。

使用像anplan这样的基于云的Connected Planning平台将这些流程连接起来，为计划者提供了对其拼图部分的可见性，无论他们是在销售、供应链还是财务部门。他们可以了解他们的库存在价值链中的位置，确保它与销售预测保持一致，并主动与供应商谈判以最大化利润。优化库存具有直接的效率影响，改善现金流，并推动组织价值。

假设你负责库存计划对于一个国际零售商来说。在12月25日之前的几周内，您有数百家商店，数万个sku和数十个促销活动。现在想象一下，一场意想不到的大暴雪袭击了美国中西部和东北部，影响了你商店的送货和客流量。使用传统的供应链计划方法，调整您的计划，发现差距，并开发方案来处理修改后的预测，将花费许多计划人员许多天的时间来建模，而这些时间在假期期间已经很短了。通过统一的计划方法，供应链与财务和销售共享信息和场景，所有这些各方都可以更快、更有效地共享信息，并在牢记业务目标的同时就修订后的预测进行协作。

了解卡特如何从供应链中剔除4到6天的库存。

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlYeyQhizeI

越来越多的职能领导者认识到需要将这些过程结合起来，并创建一个统一的计划，从而做出决策并推动增长。职能伙伴关系和数据握手至关重要，是转型变革的基石。这些组织正在减少库存天数，并大幅提高绩效;在这一年中最美好的时光里寻找成功。

值此佳节，祝你平安、快乐、万事如意。