This native integration provides a seamless way to bring into Demantra:

• Annual Operating Plan
• Financial Revenue Forecast
• Budget information

This along with the other canned integrations like the Siebel Integration that brings Sales Pipeline, Promotions and Trade Promotions enables an effective Sales & Operations Planning process in Demantra.

In-addition to bringing the above-mentioned financial series to perform Sales & Operations Planning in Demantra, this integration closes the S&OP cycle by providing the ability to send the following forecast to Hyperion:

• Consensus Quantity Forecast
• Consensus Revenue Forecast    and
• Cost of Sales

This critical feature brings Oracle closer to delivering the value out-of-the box rather than having the customers build these integrations. A number of Oracle’s current customers who have built the Demantra (prior to 7.3) to Hyperion integration as a point-to-point would definitely benefit by upgrading to this version, so that the cost of maintaining this integration is passed on to Oracle (Oracle’s and Larry’s vision)

2. CTO Attach-Rates and Dependent Demand

This much awaited feature which was available in the previous Oracle Demand planning (ODP) solution has finally made it’s way into the Demantra. This feature is very critical for ATO/CTO operating environment, especially for the following Industries – Networking, Complex Equipment Manufacturing (ex:- Medical Devices).

This feature provides the ability to calculate the planning attach rates based on historic sales as well as provide the demand planners to manual over-ride these calculated attach rates. This new release also provides the ability for the attach-rate to be managed at the aggregate or detailed-level.

This new feature provides the ability to view the BOM of a CTO/ATO Assembly in a worksheet as well as dynamically re-calculate the dependent demand if the attach rates are modified. This is one of the critical features that many of the CTO/ATO customers of Oracle have been requesting Oracle Value Chain Planning development to provide.  With this release, Oracle VCP development has proved again that they have listened to their customer’s request in solving their problems.

3. Worksheet Usability Enhancements

If you have been a demand planner and have been working on the previous versions of Demantra, I can guarantee you that your favourite Demantra pet peeve is why cannot I see the time on the X-axis? This use to be the number one usability requirement. With this new release Oracle development has delivered on it’s critical usability promise.

In-addition to this enhancement, the new release provides the following abilities:

• Ability to freeze a page level (over-all) summary row, so that summary data is visible even if the user is scrolling
• Ability to display the summary row at the top or bottom or left or right
• Ability to show the summary row for the worksheet but hide the summary row for specific levels and vice-versa

There are a lot more new and interesting capabilities that are available in this latest Demantra version (Demantra 7.3). I will go through the remaining critical features in the next blog.

Have a productive week!!!

Daniel Soosai