Seasonal Planning

[Former Member]

Hi experts,

A client of mine wants to do seasonal planning in APO Demand Planning. The requirement is to be able to define seasonality index in percentages across a twelve month period. E.g. 10% in Jan, 15% in Feb etc so that the yearly total is 100%. Whenever the seasonality index for a month is changed, the yearly total for the index should always be retained at 100%. As far as I know, there is no standard functionality to support this requirement within DP, including Seasonal Planning. An alternative to achieve this is done via a set of macros. The demanding client thinks that there should be standard/best practice to handle this within DP. Maybe there is? Any advice/more ideas would be appreciated.

The seasonality index is used for splitting forecasts from yearly figures into monthly buckets.

Regards,

Yoon

[Former Member]

Hi Yoon,

There is no standard to do it, but as you mentionned it is feasible by macro.

Somehow, macro are standard, they offer you the possibility to define your own logic!

You anyway need to define your solution ins details: if the user maintain more than 100%, how is the system suppose to react? Reduce all other months, reduce only one month (which one), give the option to planner, recalculate all months... etc.

There is so many option than a "standard" is not really feasible, hence the flexibilty with macros, however painful it can be to built, once it is done it will work as they want!

Regards

Julien

[Former Member]

Hi YooLee

Please tell the client that the amount of Master data required and the seetings would make the DP system very complex to maintain and support in long term, instead if they already having history for last few years they should load that History into a APO BW cube and use that for future Forecasting, using Standard Univariate Statistical Fcst models that are given in APO DP.

Thanks,

Harsh

[Former Member]

Hi Kedar,

I am not sure what you meant by manual forecasting. If you meant the season year in Seasonal Planning, then I don't see how it can help supporting the requirement I mentioned. Will it be able to keep the seasonality index within a calendar year/season to a total of 100% (or some custom total)?

The fixing functionality in demand planning has also some difficulties in solving this in a good way.

Regards,

Yoon

[Former Member]

Hello Yoon,

If you want the seasonal indices to disaggregate the year's forecast into months, then it is a case of using disaggregation factors. Normally if seasonal index is calculated by the system, then it will use that number to multuply the basic value of the statistical forecast to add seasonal overlays.

But I understand, your requirement is not that. The indices are actually being used to disaggreate data. Say you have maintained the factors for 12 months.

The only way of trying out, would be to fix the cells which are not changing, do the row totals and then change values in the other cells.

Regards,

Kedar

[Former Member]

Hi Yoon,

Try exploring the option of manual forecasting in APO.

I think it has the provision for changing the seasonal indices for each period of the season (depending on the number of periods defined per season).

Regards,

Kedar