Why Haven’t We Kept Pace with Innovation?

Demand-driven processes are challenging and more difficult to get right than supply, and they tend to be politically charged. Furthermore, implementing a demand-driven process in support of a new generation demand management process requires investment in people, process, analytics, and technology. Adoption requires an executive “champion” who has the influence to change corporate behavior, encourage new analytic skills (descriptive and predictive), and integrate processes horizontally utilizing new scalable technology. Companies are realizing that moving to the next generation, demand management will require a laser focus on investing in their people’s skills, which requires a change in behavior: reorganization around horizontal processes; integrating predictive as well as descriptive analytics into the process; and investing in large scale automatic forecasting technology.