NetSuite Demand Planning
My employer is moving to NetSuite as our ERP. NetSuite seems like a wonderful ERP and we are excited to be moving there. So far nothing has gone “live”; therefore, I have no NetSuite experience. My interest is in demand planning and what products NetSuite users use for forecasting. I know there are many third-party solutions but I am asking here about NetSuite solutions.
I have read of Demand Planning https://www.netsuite.com/portal/assets/pdf/ds-ns-demand-planning.pdf and NetSuite Advanced Inventory https://www.netsuite.com/portal/assets/pdf/ds-netsuite-advanced-inventory.pdf
- Are these two modules the NetSuite-supplied forecasting modules?
- Regarding Demand Planning, is OLS applied to time series data and Moving Average and Seasonal Average are two distinct algorithms?
- Do most implementations use one of the two NetSuite modules or use a third-party product instead?
Thank you for your time. If you think this question is better asked somewhere else please advise accordingly.
From my experience, Demand Planning is fairly limited in the scope of what it can do. It is okay if your forecast is very simple and your SKU/item count is fairly low.
Advanced Inventory really does not have much to do with forecasting; I believe it adds reorder points, and bins into the system (and some other things).
I work as a developer for a Built for NetSuite bolt-on that uses a different methodology for material resource planning as opposed to traditional forecasting. Feel free to check us out https://www.demanddriventech.com/
Hello Richard,
I am a NetSuite Administrator in training, in the early days of it. I’ll do my best to get you some more information.
1: Demand Planning is a built-in feature that can be enabled in NetSuite. For this to be able to be turned on, “Advanced Inventory Management” must first be toggled on. Both of these must be done by an Administrator in Setup > Company > Setup Tasks > Enable Features.
2: Linear Regression and Moving Average are two separate methods for calculating item demand, I’m unsure of the specifics of OLS but linear regression in NetSuite does use the OLS regression method.
3: Different companies use NetSuite many different ways, what I would do is give the built-in features a go, and if these give you trouble, there is a plethora of SuiteApps that can help make some things easier.
Once you get access to NetSuite and Go Live there is a large FAQ with more information on Calculating Item Demand, Demand Plans, etc.
Hope I was able to help provide some level of clarity.
It isn’t as simple as they are “turned on”, those are extra, paid for modules.
