An Introduction to SAP Demand Signal Management (DSiM)

It is getting more and more important to understand and react to the end consumer demand – not only for retailers who are selling the products directly to the consumers but especially for the manufacturers, no matter if they produce for example consumer products or high tech goods.

For them, it is crucial to receive demand signals that are of high quality and that transport the most recent information directly from the retailer stores and  distribution centers. This kind of information can be received via different data sources such as retailer Point-of-Sale data (POS), market research data that also provides insights on the overall market as well as the competitors, but also social media data from blogs, tweets and other platforms.

Problem is that this kind of data is kept separate and is widely spread throughout the company with hardly any linkage to company internal data such as shipments or alignment between the departments who own it (Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain or IT).

This is where SAP Demand Signal Management (DSiM) comes into play!

SAP Demand Signal Management, which is powered by SAP HANA, contains a consistent, centralized In-Memory database that stores large volumes of data such as internal master and transactional data (e.g. shipments), external POS data and market research data, etc. This is combined with a framework that ensures the integration, cleansing and harmonization of the data during upload in order to achieve high qualitative results and a common data base for reporting and further processing of the data. 

With that, SAP Demand Signal Management enables manufacturers to 

• Analyze and improve their sales and brand performance
• Increase their trade promotion effectiveness
• Optimize inventory levels throughout the supply chain
• Successfully launch new products
• Get aware of critical out-of-stock situations at the retailer store and with that, prevent upcoming lost sales situations
• Quickly Spot  Market Trends and Deviations
• Faster respond to Demand Fluctuations
• …

This ensures that manufacturers keep track on the performance between the different trading partners and analyze their product, brand or even category performance which, in the end, improves the general insight on the end consumer’s behavior.