Springs Window Fashions改进需求计划，以提高客户服务

Springs Window Fashions, a Wisconsin-based manufacturer of configure-to-order residential and commercial window treatments, is known as “The Best Experience Company.” To provide consumers with an outstanding customer experience, the company offers products in a vast array of styles, colors, textures, dimensions, and functions, resulting in millions of possible combinations. Although that huge product mix is a delight for customers, it represents a challenge for the company’s supply chain planners, who must ensure that the right materials, products, and labor are always available to meet customer demand.

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The planners’ work is complicated by the fact that a significant portion of Springs’ demand is influenced by consumer promotions. The company’s legacy demand planning solution did a good job of forecasting demand for non-promotional products—which comprised less than half of the business.

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To fill the gap, demand planners spent hours using offline analytics and manual entry adjustments to translate forecasts into operational plans, but those were still high-level. Leaders at Springs Window Fashions knew that significant performance improvement could only come from improving lower-level forecast accuracy.

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\r\nFour times as fast, three times as complex

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Springs chose Anaplan as the foundation for a new demand planning solution and engaged Anaplan Partner Valizant to help develop it. Valizant worked with the demand planning team and with organizations across the business to ensure alignment, create a shared vision for the solution, and build collaborative business processes.

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“The Springs solution provides a seamless and highly responsive experience through all aspects of the demand planning process,” said Ed Lewis, president and CEO of Valizant. “It supports promotions planning, statistical forecasting, and collaborative demand planning across all layers of the organization.”

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The solution was completed in just six months. “Compared to other implementations for our exact same business, Anaplan solutions from Valizant were up and running in a quarter of the time,” said Mickey Klicka, Springs Window Fashions’ Manager, Financial Systems. “And the solution delivered is probably three times as complex.”

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Promotional calendars and events are managed in Anaplan for each key account so that past promotional activity and retail sales data are captured and used to project demand driven by the new calendar and set of events.

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Now, plans for regular and promotion-based demand are generated on one Anaplan platform. Plans are accessible across the business, so operations managers, purchasing personnel, and other teams can organize their work accordingly.

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\r\nMore frequent, detailed, and accurate planning and forecasting

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With Anaplan solutions from Valizant, Springs has moved from monthly demand planning to a weekly cycle. In addition to forecasting more frequently, 25% of products are now forecast at a lower level—and despite these increases in frequency and product granularity, the forecast accuracy with Anaplan matches that of the former high-level forecast. “At lower, more granular levels, where the business benefit is greatest, demand forecast accuracy with Anaplan solutions from Valizant has improved more than 30%,” Klicka says.

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“With Anaplan, our demand planners are proactive instead of reactive,” Andy Hubred, Springs Window Fashions’ Chief Financial Officer says. “They are not only completing the planning cycle within the week, but they have capacity to take on analytical projects that support better business performance.”

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The benefits of the solution extend beyond the demand planning department. The forecasts provide manufacturing facilities with a view of future labor, fabrication, and assembly needs; assist with purchasing and inventory management, particularly for critical materials with long lead times; and provide relevant raw material requirements to Springs’ vendors to eliminate production delays.

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For Springs, the key to the project’s success was engaging users across the business in designing the forecasting system. The demand planning team appreciated not being constrained to the predefined methods of conventional tools, and the company as a whole has recognized that the Anaplan Connected Planning solution can support key business processes beyond demand planning.

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“Anything that we could think up to configure within Anaplan, we could do,” Klicka concludes. “We can keep adding to it and extending it.”

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Springs Window Fashions是一家位于威斯康星州的住宅和商业窗户处理设备制造商，被称为“最佳体验公司”。为了给消费者提供卓越的客户体验，该公司提供了各种风格、颜色、纹理、尺寸和功能的产品，从而产生了数百万种可能的组合。尽管如此庞大的产品组合让客户感到高兴，但这对公司的供应链规划者来说是一个挑战，他们必须确保始终有合适的材料、产品和劳动力来满足客户的需求。

规划者的工作很复杂，因为斯普林斯的需求很大一部分是受到消费者促销活动的影响。该公司的传统需求规划解决方案在预测非促销产品的需求方面做得很好，而非促销产品只占业务的不到一半。

为了填补缺口，需求规划人员花费数小时使用离线分析和手动输入调整，将预测转化为运营计划，但这些仍然是高水平的。Springs Window Fashions的领导者知道，只有提高较低水平的预测准确性才能显著提高业绩。

四倍的速度，三倍的复杂度

Springs选择了anplan作为新的需求规划解决方案的基础，并聘请了anplan Partner Valizant来帮助开发。Valizant与需求规划团队和跨业务的组织合作，以确保一致性，为解决方案创建共享的愿景，并构建协作的业务流程。

Valizant总裁兼首席执行官Ed Lewis表示:“Springs解决方案在需求规划过程的各个方面都提供了无缝的、高度响应性的体验。“它支持跨组织所有层次的促销计划、统计预测和协作需求计划。”

解决方案在六个月内就完成了。Springs Window时装公司财务系统经理Mickey Klicka表示:“与我们相同业务的其他实施方案相比，Valizant公司的Ana亚搏彩票app官方网站plan解决方案在四分之一的时间内就可以启动并运行。”“而交付的解决方案可能要复杂三倍。”

促销日历和活动在anplan中针对每个关键客户进行管理，以便捕捉过去的促销活动和零售销售数据，并用于预测由新日历和活动集驱动的需求。

现在，常规和促销需求的计划都是在一个Anaplan平台上生成的。整个企业都可以访问计划，因此运营经理、采购人员和其他团队可以相应地组织他们的工作。

更频繁、详细和准确的计划和预测

通过Valizant的an亚搏彩票app官方网站plan解决方案，Springs已经从每月需求计划转变为每周周期。除了更频繁的预测外，25%的产品现在的预测水平较低——尽管频率和产品粒度有所增加，Anaplan的预测准确性与以前的高水平预测相匹配。kicka表示:“在业务效益最大的更低、更细粒度的级别上，使用Valizant的Anaplan解决方案进行需求预测的准确性提高了30%以上。亚搏彩票app官方网站

Springs Window时装公司的首席财务官安迪•休布里德说:“通过anplan，我们的需求规划者是主动的，而不是被动的。”“他们不仅能在一周内完成规划周期，而且有能力承担有助于提高业务绩效的分析项目。”

该解决方案的好处超出了需求规划部门。这些预测为制造设施提供了未来劳动力、制造和装配需求的观点;协助采购和库存管理，特别是关键物料的长交货期;并向Springs供应商提供相关的原材料需求，以消除生产延误。

对于Springs来说，项目成功的关键是让整个业务的用户参与到预测系统的设计中来。需求规划团队很感激不受传统工具的预定义方法的限制，并且公司作为一个整体已经认识到，Anaplan Connected planning解决方案可以支持需求规划之外的关键业务流程。

kicka总结道:“任何我们能想到在Anaplan中配置的东西，我们都能做到。“我们可以继续增加和扩大它。”