|
Products
Overview
Enterprise
Software
SAP Endorsed Business Solution
Hosted (SaaS) Solution
Request
A Demo
Demand Signal Repository (DSR)
Demand Data Integrator: An SAP Endorsed Business Solution
RFID Adapter
Retailer Adapters: Wal-Mart, Target, Food Lion, and more
Demand
Signal Repository (DSR)
A Demand Signal
Repository (DSR) is an enterprise database designed
to collect, cleanse, harmonize, aggregate and publish granular
data from many points of distribution and retailers. DSR’s
are a new phenomenon because only recently has consistent
daily or weekly demand chain and supply chain data been available
from downstream. But just having the data is far from enough
from
making a DSR work. Most manufacturing firms do not build
a
DSR from scratch.
Rather, they buy one from Vision Chain. Why?
- Retailer
Changes: the frequency and types of data from each retailer change
all the time. The type of distribution method changes, as
does security, user ids, data sharing guidelines, and more. Any
and all of these changes can invalidate previous work and bring
the system down.
- Data Sizes: DSR’s are often the largest databases in a consumer
products firm. Typically, CP companies don’t have years
of experience with setting up, tuning, storing, securing and
using
this amount of data. This makes the decision to buy a DSR a
must, especially with RFID growth imminent.
- Harmonization: there’s no easy way to match up products
across many retailers, including promotional packs, display
items, and
other variations. Further confusion comes from units of measure,
equivalization, and identification challenges. Finally, tying
in store demographics, weather, and other third party data
can cause
big headaches or un-usable output.
Vision Chain has over a hundred man-years of expertise in how
to structure multi-retailer, multi-supply chain data stores and
resolve
data problems of every conceivable type. Our intellectual property
includes methods of tuning and optimizing these databases that
does not exist anywhere else.
Without a DSR, most companies lose out on the following benefits:
- Single Version of the Truth: without a single repository, organizations
typically end up with different reports and different totals
for the same business activity. When these collide, progress
stops. All parts of the supply chain (logistics, planning, transportation,
orders, etc.) need to be working off the same base data.
- Feeder for Existing Applications. This is unique to Vision
Chain. Business run on mission critical supply chain applications.
Whether for warehouse management, inventory optimization, demand
forecasting,
planning, manufacturing execution—a company usually
has many enterprise software applications in place. Each
of these
needs
to be demand driven. Getting the same version of the demand
numbers into each one requires a DSR, and a DSR with a
robust application
interface (API) to feed these systems.
- Support Sanity. Some companies make the mistake of thinking
their enterprise data warehouse (EDW) can handle the volumes
and
instability of demand data. Since it’s their only data warehouse, they’ve
not considered the need for another one. Wedging demand data
into an EDW is like bringing along the haystack with the
needle. Most
users just need snippets of actionable data. They need a
needle, not the haystack.
|