What Is Market-Driven Demand Management

Demand management is critical to driving out inefficiencies in the supply chain, and it is the most leveragable metric on the supply chain 

Most companies do not have the luxury to wait for demand to occur and then react to a customer order. Because of the intricacies of supply chain processes, they must plan to be ready to fulfill channel sales. This includes sensing demand signals, proactively shaping demand, and translating demand into the most effective supply response to meet customer orders. 

Market-driven demand management utilizes data from market and channel sources to sense, shape, and translate demand requirements into an actionable demand response bidirectionally from market to market. A true market-driven forecast is an unconstrained view, or a best estimate of market demand based on channel data. Demand shaping is based on campaigns to combine price, new product launches, trade and sales promotions and incentives, advertising, and marketing programs to impact what and how much customers will buy. 

The building of market-driven value networks is a critical part of channel strategy design. When implemented correctly, it exploits (or influences) the strength of an existing brand or segment to propel or pull products through the channels of distribution. It is outside-in. When successful, the data has minimal latency. 

This is in sharp contrast with supply-driven demand concepts developed over the past 15 years. These legacy stand-alone product 

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