Demand Shaping is Mandatory for Increasing Revenue And Providing Good Customer Experience As product choices and the number of SKUs grow, demand shaping techniques are mandatory for increasing revenue and for providing good customer experience in this customer-centric world

1.
Increase Revenue By
Demand Shaping
At Point‐of‐Sale

2.
Sales forecasting is a challenge in the best of times!
The times we are in make it a herculean task. Market demand shifts
continually as economic conditions change, products change, prices fluctuate,
competitors act, new products are introduced, marketing creates
promotions…….. The list is quite endless. Current planning and forecasting
methods are reactive and struggle to keep up with these shifts.
The solution is “Demand sensing and Demand Shaping” ‐ active methods to
predict what demand will arise and keep ahead of the market. Demand
sensing is the ability to detect what choices customers are buying patterns
and the trends associated with these choices. Demand sensing can help you
to quickly see market shifts to plan your product mix and offering.
“Demand sensing and Demand Shaping” -
active methods to predict what demand
will arise and keep ahead of the market
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3.
Demand Shaping For Higher Sales
Demand shaping is the ability to guide customers to the best choices at point‐
of‐sale. This is the true to key to supply chain efficiency. However, demand
shaping needs product intelligence at point‐of‐sale to guide customers to the
best choices. Some of the ways to demand shape are –
 If you offer many products or SKUs, there are typically strong buying
patterns in the demand. For example – This printer is often bought
with this paper, this cartridge and cable. Then, when a customer
selects the printer, you can to automatically show him the other items
that have strong buying patterns. The customer will thank you for
this because the usually need these additional items, and you just
saved him a lot of effort thinking about it, and a ton of time searching
for it. And you made more money in this sale!
Customers buying patterns
Customers who bought this product also
bought this other product, or these
products are very often bought together.
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4.
 If you offer a product with many attributes, every sale will begin with the
customer calling out a few attributes. The opportunity to demand shape
is to recommend a good choice based on the partial list of attributes the
customer has called out. Demand Shaping requires the ability to
complete the order with the right attributes. The best way to complete
the order is to have sales intelligence these attributes are bought with
these other attributes. It is the Amazon‐esque way to look at products
with many attributes.
The opportunity to demand shape is
to recommend a good choice based on
the partial list of attributes the
customer has called out.
 The biggest opportunity of Demand Shaping is guiding customers to
close‐enough SKUs. Most buying is done with ‘kinda‐sorta’ attribute
description. As the number of product features grow, there are a large
number of SKUs that we similar. So there is a significant opportunity to
guide a customer to a similar or close‐enough SKU. The SKU may differ in
attributes that the customer did not call out or specify. If you can offer up
this SKU it is a win‐win. You have served the customer. You have won the
sale. You have moved your inventory. Your competitor did not get this
customer.
The biggest opportunity of Demand
Shaping is guiding customers to close-
enough SKUs.
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5.
Demand Shaping is Mandatory for Increasing Revenue And Providing
Good Customer Experience
As product choices and the number of SKUs grow, demand shaping
techniques are mandatory for increasing revenue and for providing good
customer experience in this customer‐centric world.
Think of demand sensing as predicting what demand will arise, as opposed to
simply reacting to incoming orders. Shaping demand, on the other hand, is all
about steering customers toward available products and services.
Call To Action – How much revenue can you gain by demand shaping and up‐
selling? What are the strong customer buying patterns in your demand that you can
leverage to increase revenue? For a quick evaluation to quantify the revenue gain
please contact Emcien at www.emcien.com.
About Emcien, Inc.
Emcien offers an analytics software solution that auto-detects customer buying patterns and trends in
sales transaction data. With Emcien’s analytics companies’ can increase profits by intelligently guiding
customers to the best product choices and recommending additional products at point-of-sale.
Companies also use Emcien’s analytics to optimize their product offering to capture demand at
highest profit. Customers include Fortune 500 companies and manufacturers in the electronics,
automotive and industrial sectors. Emcien was named a 2008 Cool Vendor in SCM and ERP 2008
by Gartner, Inc. To learn more, call 404-961-6360 or visit www.emcien.com.
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