Sales Forecasting and Inventory Planning: Finding Cost-Effective Solutions
An early-stage distribution company currently relies on spreadsheets for monthly sales forecasting and inventory planning by customer and SKU, but faces issues such as lack of flexibility and error-proneness. They need a solution that supports seasonal business, multi-level forecasting (such as regular sales and promotions) at a reasonable cost, and have ruled out the overpriced Justenough product, seeking peer recommendations.
In our distribution business (not manufacturing), we currently use spreadsheets for monthly sales forecasting by customer and SKU, which are also used for inventory planning. The spreadsheets track unit quantities as well as sales and cost amounts. Our ERP system is Netsuite.
The advantages of the current solution are: it is very flexible, low-cost, and supports formulas. The disadvantages include: it is not robust, adding new SKUs or customers is cumbersome, it is error-prone, and reporting capabilities are limited.
Business Requirements
As an early-stage company, we cannot rely on historical sales data. We need to be able to easily enter different monthly quantities for each (key) customer and each SKU to handle seasonal business (sell-through). Additionally, we need the ability to add notes at each forecasting level—for example, for a specific customer, the same SKU in the same month may have two forecast amounts: one regular sales figure and one special promotion figure.
Seeking Advice
We would like to learn how others in the industry handle this area. I once came across a product called Justenough, but it is too expensive. We do not need all the fancy features; we just want a solution that is more stable and robust than our current spreadsheets.
Core need: Find a tool that supports multi-level forecasting, is easy for data entry and notes, and is more reliable than spreadsheets, all within a limited budget.
If you have practical experience or tool recommendations in similar scenarios, please share. We are especially interested in cost-effective solutions that can handle seasonal fluctuations and promotions, while integrating smoothly with Netsuite.