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Charlie Chase
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Executive Industry Consultant/Trusted Advisor, SAS Retail/CPG Global Practice

Charles Chase is the executive industry consultant and trusted advisor for the SAS Retail/CPG global practice. He is the author of Next Generation Demand Management: People, Process, Analytics and Technology, author of Demand-Driven Forecasting: A Structured Approach to Forecasting, and co-author of Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation, as well as over 50 articles in several business journals on demand forecasting and planning, supply chain management, and market response modeling. His latest book is Consumption-Based Forecasting and Planning: Predicting Changing Demand Patterns in the New Digital Economy. To learn more, please see his Author page.

Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Cloud | Machine Learning
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6 advantages of using software as a service for grocery supply chain planning

You're not alone if you’re still seeing local grocery stores with empty shelves.  Food shortages are still lingering in 2023. Increases in consumer demand, labor shortages and shipping capacity restraints continue to interrupt supply chains, particularly for grocery retailers. These problems have persisted throughout the pandemic, as seen with the shortages

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Solving 3 emerging challenges for retail and consumer goods supply chains

The landscape of supply chains has changed rapidly due to unforeseen disruptions.  These changes include supply chain bottlenecks, inflation and geopolitical activities across retail and consumer goods industries. Retail supply chains are under immense pressure to keep up with these rapid changes. Innovators have been quick to take advantage of

Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Cloud
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6 advantages of using software as a service for demand planning

Getting demand right – or getting it wrong – can have a significant impact on customer perceptions of your brand, particularly in this age of instant gratification. The need for agile, accurate demand planning has never been greater. Predicting forward-looking demand signals and shifting consumer demand patterns to recommend balanced, profitable commercial

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6 ways retailers can rebalance inventories as consumers shift spending

Consumers are pulling back and shifting their purchases in the wake of inflationary pressures caused by high prices for fuel, freight costs, consumer goods and nonessential products. Demand is shifting faster than many retailers and consumer goods companies anticipated. Inflation continues to rise forcing consumer spending to shift once again

Analytics | Machine Learning
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How life science and health care supply chains can adapt to disruption

Robert Handfield, PhD, is a distinguished professor of Supply Chain Management at North Carolina State University and Director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative. In an episode of the Health Pulse Podcast, Handfield gave his views regarding the challenges health care and life science companies have encountered over the past two years

Analytics | Customer Intelligence | Data Visualization | Marketing
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How CDP technologies offer sales and marketing teams powerful insights

In today's environment, data is exceedingly important but also increasingly harder to get and manage. A reliable customer data platform (CDP) can provide significant value to retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Customer data platforms are used to consolidate and integrate customer and consumer data into a single data source. CDP

Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Data Management | Data Visualization
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Misnomers regarding outliers and their usefulness in statistical modeling

Outliers provide much-needed insights into the actual relationships that influence the demand for products in the marketplace. They are particularly useful when modeling consumer behavior where abnormalities are common occurrences or unforeseen disruptions that impact consumer demand. But why do demand planners cleanse out outliers, when many are not really

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Can demand planning save your supply chain? Find out with this free trial

The past 20 months of disruptions caused by COVID-19 have been a wake-up call for retailers and consumer goods companies. Unpredictable market trends have caused havoc with categories, brands and products making it harder to predict supply requirements. All of these changes have given rise to the need for consumption

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What does it take to become an analytics-driven demand planning organization?

The social and economic impact of COVID-19 has dramatically affected supply chains and demand planning across all industries. Then there’s the Amazon effect, which has led to sky-high consumer expectations of the ordering and delivery process. Demand planners for retailers and consumer goods companies have quickly realized they have no

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Has your company considered a managed application service for demand planning?

The need for agile, accurate demand planning has never been greater. When considering migrating your demand management application to a cloud-native solution, you might experience platform management challenges ranging from lacking the resources needed to oversee application operations, to manipulating maintenance tasks that may distract from growing the business. Why

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Is your demand management process stuck in the 1990s?

Demand management concepts are now over 30 years old. The first use of the term "demand management" surfaced in the commercial sector in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Before that, the focus was on a more siloed approach to demand forecasting and planning that was manual and used simple

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SAS and C.H. Robinson are rewriting the rules of transportation planning and management

What if you had a technology solution that creates a real-time link between the customer demand signal and what's happening on the ground? What if plans that are being steered centrally could  finally be connected to every shipping lane, while simultaneously, creating cost saving carrier adjustments? The first-of-its kind integration

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Is short-term demand sensing a key component of your digital supply chain transformation?

Depending on who you talk to, you'll get varying definitions and opinions regarding demand sensing. Anything from sensing short-range replenishment based on sales orders, to the manual blending of point-of-sales (POS) data and shipments. But a key component for retailers and CPG companies is accurately forecasting short-term consumer demand to

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Rapid demand response forecasting helps retailers adapt during COVID-19

Rapid demand response forecasting techniques are forecasting processes that can incorporate key information quickly enough to act upon in real time by agile supply chains.   Retailers and consumer goods suppliers are urgently trying to determine how changes in consumer behavior will affect their regions, channels, categories, brands and products during

Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
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How do I explain a flat-line forecast to senior management?

How do you explain flat-line forecasts to senior management? Or, do you just make manual overrides to adjust the forecast?    When there is no detectable trend or seasonality associated with your demand history, or something has disrupted the trend and/or seasonality, simple time series methods (i.e. naïve and simple

Analytics | Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
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Is machine learning practical for statistical forecasting?

There's been a lot of hype regarding using machine learning (ML) for demand forecasting, and rightfully so, given the advancements in data collection, storage, and processing along with improvements in technology. There's no reason why machine learning can't be utilized as another forecasting method among the collection of forecasting methods

Analytics | Artificial Intelligence | Internet of Things | Machine Learning
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Practical approaches to new product forecasting using structured and unstructured data

When it comes to forecasting new product launches, executives say that it's a frustrating, almost futile, effort. The reason? Minimal data, limited analytic capabilities and a general uncertainty surrounding a new product launch. Not to mention the ever-changing marketplace. Nevertheless, companies cannot disregard the need for a new product forecast

Analytics | Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
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Will artificial intelligence replace humans?

We have entered the “second machine age.” The first machine age began with the industrial revolution, which was driven primarily by technology innovation. The ability to generate massive amounts of mechanical power made humans more productive. Where the steam engine started the industrial revolution, the second machine age has taken

Internet of Things | Machine Learning
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Is quick response forecasting a reality or just another buzzword?

“Quick response forecasting (QRF) techniques are forecasting processes that can incorporate information quickly enough to act upon by agile supply chains” explained Dr. Larry Lapide, in a recent Journal of Business Forecasting column. The concept of QRF is based on updating demand forecasts to reflect real and rapid changes in demand, both

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Why do we rely on judgment when analytics outperforms it?

Wherever there is uncertainty there has got to be judgment, and wherever there is judgment there is an opportunity for human fallibility. Donald Redelmeirer, physician-researcher Recently, I read a fascinating book titled The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Mind by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton & Company, 2017). Lewis

Advanced Analytics | Machine Learning
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Is demand sensing and shaping a key component of your company’s digital supply chain transformation?

Depending on who you speak with you will get varying definitions and opinions regarding demand sensing and shaping from sensing short-range replenishment based on sales orders to manual blending of point-of-sales (POS) data and shipments.        Most companies think that they are sensing demand when in fact they are

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At the end of the day, it’s all about analytics-driven forecasting

Analytics-driven forecasting means more than measuring trend and seasonality. It includes all categories of methods (e.g. exponential smoothing, dynamic regression, ARIMA, ARIMA(X), unobserved component models, and more), including artificial intelligence, but not necessarily deep learning algorithms. That said, deep learning algorithms like neural networks can also be used for demand forecasting,

Advanced Analytics | Analytics | Machine Learning
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Straight talk about forecasting and machine learning

Are you caught up in the machine learning forecasting frenzy? Is it reality or more hype?  There's been a lot of hype about using machine learning for forecasting. And rightfully so, given the advancements in data collection, storage, and processing along with technology improvements, such as super computers and more powerful

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