The Demand Planning Function is at the heart Binzagr Company. It sits at the core of the business linking Sales with the Operations/Logistics Teams. It’s an integral function of the company’s operations, responsible for the end-to-end availability of products across the distribution network, stored at strategic warehouse locations to enable the Sales Teams to execute sales plans in the market and deliver the company’s sales objectives

Demand Plannings’ core functions can be divided into four broad areas:

• Stock procurement from Principal
• Replenishment of stocks across the distribution network
• Customer Service
• Trade Marketing / Category Operations

The procurement process starts with forecasting, based on sales trends, current stockholding, marketing support plans, Principle growth aspirations, stock cover norms, historical supply variability and other key determinants. It is an extensive process called Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) which is conducted on monthly basis with relevant Vendors’ Commercial and Supply Chain Teams. Demand Planning owns and leads the process driving the discussion around forecast accuracy & bias, stocks connectivity on time and future forecasting. The output of this process translates into orders to secure sales as per the forecast. The Demand Planning Team procures stocks from local and foreign sources across the world. Stock procurement also involves alignment on various supply chain KPIs with the Vendors, raising formal Purchase Orders (PO’s), trade documentation and various other steps. Demand Planners work diligently on daily basis with our Principal’s Supply Chain Team to track stocks in transit. Moreover, the team operates in close co-ordination with BCo’s Supply Department to expedite shipments cleared from port.

A dedicated team of dispatch planners takes charge of the stocks once they arrive at the Central Warehouse. Based on the channel landscape and profile, SKU wise assortment for each branch is worked out and built in the system. Besides this, branch specific stocks norms, dispatch frequency and other parameters are used as inputs to determine individual SKU-wise stock requirement, to ensure the right SKU and right quantity is available at the right location on consistent basis to execute sales orders. The requirement of each order is translated into a Stocks Transfer Order (STO) which is shared with Logistics and Operations to replenish stocks from the Central Warehouse. This is a continuous process and various state of the art dashboards have been developed for tracking of performance KPIs.

Besides stocks procurement and distribution across the network, Demand Planning is responsible for Customer Service as well. A dedicated team is in place who have a direct interface with key customers to measure and improve service level KPIs. The Customer Service Team works closely with Sales and Dispatch Planning teams to identify and track open orders and work out the plan to maximize service levels. A detailed Loss Tree is extracted in the system to identify where stock losses are coming from. The team works out a plan on continuous basis to minimize losses.

The Demand Planning Department is also responsible for Category Operations / Trade Marketing. The Team works closely with the Principal’s Trade Category Team to develop channel wise trade support plans and executes these in the market. Once the plans are finalized, they are communicated to the Sales Team for execution. The Category Operations Team closely tracks channel wise sales performance from a category and brand perspective and brings it to “top of mind” for the Sales Team to identify gaps and opportunities in terms of category / brand growth and coverage providing them with the building blocks to tap potential. They also track the performance of trade support and budget reconciliation.

Demand Planning has forward looking approach towards business. The team has identified future potential opportunities and challenges with respect to forecasting, inventory management and replenishment models. The Team is working on a project to put existing processes and systems on a scientific basis to ensure better speed of action and realize better and cost efficient business performance.