Announcing New Pivot Maps
Back in the early 1990's, the principals of Demand Works were among the first to develop and market an integrated demand and supply planning software package for the Windows operating system. Then, earlier in this century, we invented Pivot Forecasting®, a flexible yet scalable OLAP-based technology that totally eclipsed rigid, "pyramid-based" approaches to demand planning. Pivot Forecasting was a huge breakthrough. For the last several years, our competitors have tried to make something like Pivot Forecasting and thankfully they still haven't figured it out. Now, we've got another really big first: Pivot Maps®.
What are they?
Have you ever seen a weather map? Thanks to maps, you can immediately see where the storm is, where it's sunny, or whether it's hot or cold in any part of the world and even within your local area. Pivot Maps leverage that kind of visualization. They are a graphical representation of size, changes, differences, or ratios in a supply chain. They are a powerful tool to help you to understand your company's sales, inventories, forecasts, plan accuracy, and demand signals in ways that have not been possible before.
Pivot Maps are an innovation that involves the combination of modern heat map technology with Smoothie's multidimensional Pivot Planning®. Pivot Planning makes it possible to plan for demand and supply, summarize or drill into demand and supply details within complex industrial-sized supply chains. Heat maps represent hierarchical data in nested rectangles. Sub-groupings are displayed as smaller rectangles within larger ones. Color variations represent change, differences, or larger or smaller ratios. Larger rectangles represent larger sales, inventories, or forecast quantities. When combined with OLAP-enabled Pivot Planning, heat map data visualization technology becomes a powerful tool for business planners and executives. In summary, heat maps + Pivot Planning = Pivot Maps.
What can I do with Pivot Maps?
With Pivot Maps, you can compare any two measure series, like different forecasts, at multiple levels of detail at the same time. The Pivot Maps will show you which customers or items are larger, and the colors will immediately highlight where values are larger or smaller. It's a great way to compare archived forecasts to actuals, forecasts to other forecasts (to see where forecasts have changed since the last demand review meeting, for example), history to future plans, and countless other things. When comparing historic periods to future ones, the Pivot Maps in Smoothie will highlight where larger or smaller parts of your revenue mix are expanding or contracting. Pivot Maps are a powerful way to instantly diagnose plan performance or changes, identify exceptions, sense product or customer life cycle changes, or craft important strategic portfolio strategies.
In addition to evaluating differences between period-based data series like demand histories and forecasts, Pivot Maps can also visually segment inventories and other non-periodic supply chain information. For example, you can use Pivot Maps to show inventories and turnover in a single, multilevel view. Large rectangles would be larger inventory balances, and the color would indicate higher or lower expected inventory turns.
Where can I get Pivot Maps?
As you may have expected, you can only get Pivot Maps from Demand Works. If you are already a Demand Works customer and you are on our maintenance program, then you will be pleased to know that we have decided to include Pivot Maps with the Plus and SP versions of Smoothie that are available for download at your convenience.