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Publishing

Closing the Book on Spreadsheets: How a Global Publishing Leader Mastered Demand Planning for 300,000 Titles

With operations spanning 70 countries and an immense catalog of products, one of the world's largest education and publishing companies found itself constrained by disconnected data and manual S&OP reviews. Discover how they partnered with o9 Solutions to move beyond legacy systems and Excel, leveraging an AI-powered platform to accurately forecast demand at the ISBN level, reduce inventory obsolescence, and slash manual reporting time.

This company needed to bring multiple, disparate data sources together onto a single platform that provides the automation of dynamic and agile data analytics. Leveraging such a platform would increase efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency in the S&OP process.

Sustainability impact

Better obsolescence projection and recovery (e.g., reclaim obsolete kit components), phase-in of newer editions, and phase-out of older editions more efficiently.

challenges

Complexity to Clarity

Challenge

The company had a limited ability to quickly understand key trends in its product categories and update demand planning.

Solution

With o9, they can now plan and include key drivers of demand at the ISBN level (~300K ISBNs). They implemented a multidimensional model with attribute-based aggregation and disaggregation to analyze and enrich demand planning.

Value Delivery

Systems Replaced

  • Excel

Key Functionalities Implemented

The company is using the o9 Enterprise Knowledge Graph as a read-only system, which takes demand and supply plans as inputs to help in Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and demonstrate the gaps, shortages, KPIs, etc. The views set up on the o9 platform help the planners and management make informed decisions on forecast enrichment, measure and track KPIs, procurement, kitting and de-kitting, destroy actions, and track (and avoid) obsolescence and deterioration.

Customer Benefits

success factors

  • One system of engagement for all supply chain-related data – replacing the source systems, i.e., Logility for Demand and Oracle ASCP for Supply.
  • Visualization - shift away from creating manual reports to analyzing exceptions like supply-demand mismatch and supply projections.
  • Increased effectiveness and efficiency - convey analytical information in the S&OP process without significant manual effort.

KPI Impacted

  • Reduction in obsolescence due to increased visibility, better forecasting, and tighter supply planning decisions.
  • A reduction in COGS from repurposing IRCS, re-stickering between loose-leaf and print offer, and effective use of print gang-runs.
  • The efficiency gained from using the o9 tool allows for savings to be made in FTE.
whitepaper

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