From egg-shaped candies at Easter to gardening tools in the spring, customer demand shifts with the seasons. Spring and summer also bring new product launches, targeted promotions, and increased consumer spending, all of which drive fluctuations that ripple straight into inventory and sales.
For suppliers, getting ahead of seasonal demand means meeting retailer expectations and capturing market opportunities when they open up. Aligning more closely with your retail trading partners also strengthens those relationships and protects your margins. Here are the key strategies suppliers use to plan for seasonal demand.
Collect the Data
Before you can plan for the future, you need to know where you've been. For suppliers, that means gathering complete, accurate sales and inventory information. In practice, a few common challenges get in the way:
- Limited data availability. When information is gathered through manual processes, or sales and inventory data sits siloed across different systems, pulling together a complete picture is difficult and invites error. Bringing your data into one connected system helps keep it clean, accessible, and reliable.
- Poor internal collaboration. When departments work in silos, forecasts get derailed by misaligned goals. Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), a monthly sync between marketing, production, inventory management, and sales, coordinates every business area around shared goals for more accurate forecasting.
- Incomplete historical data. Less than three years of historical transaction and inventory data, whether due to outdated processes, rapid growth, or staff turnover, can skew analysis toward one-off trends instead of patterns that are truly seasonal.
- Lack of visibility into retailer data. Real alignment with your retail trading partners depends on access to their sell-through data. That visibility gives you a clearer read on product demand and surfaces seasonal trends by location, product, or customer.
Demand Forecasting for Suppliers: Analyze the Trends
Once your data is collected and cleaned, demand planning and forecasting can begin. Demand planning predicts upcoming demand for your products, using that information to adjust output, balance inventory levels, and fulfill trading partner orders on time and in full without stockouts. Tools like Decision Intelligence help suppliers clean and apply market data quickly, so analysts can pair historical data with current trends to understand demand. With those insights, you can sharpen allocations and orders to match demand, improve sell-through, and stay ahead of shifting trends.
Share Retail Sell-Through Data With Your Retailers
Bringing your trading partners into the forecasting process lets you share your read on product demand and align around shared business goals. Sharing data-driven insights builds trust in your recommendations and adds real value to the partnership. Staying on the same page depends on reliable, timely communication. EDI solutions with real-time communication channels help you consolidate and organize your supply chain so you can stay ahead of shifting demand.
Work Your Plan
Once you have a clear picture of seasonal demand from solid forecasting, you can determine the materials and equipment needed to meet production goals and schedule production around retailer needs. A few things help keep that plan on track:
- Coordinate labor and production timelines to keep deliveries on schedule and meet retailer demand.
- Maintain timely communication so you're sharing accurate information and can adjust quickly as demand shifts, keeping your supply chain agile.
Reap the Rewards, and Repeat
When you use data-driven insights to forecast demand, collaborate with trading partners on production and supply plans, and align around shared goals and timely communication, the payoff is stronger relationships along with better sales and margins. SPS Commerce provides the tools and expertise to help you put this approach to work, season after season. To learn more about building demand planning into your supply chain, contact SPS Commerce to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is seasonal demand planning?
Seasonal demand planning is the process suppliers use to forecast how demand for their products will shift with the seasons, so they can adjust inventory, production, and promotions ahead of time instead of reacting after the fact.
Why is retailer sell-through data important for seasonal forecasting?
Sell-through data shows suppliers what's actually selling at retail, by location, product, and customer. Without it, suppliers are forecasting from their own shipment data alone, which can miss real shifts in seasonal demand.
How does Decision Intelligence help with seasonal demand planning?
Decision Intelligence helps suppliers clean, consolidate, and apply retail sales and inventory data quickly, giving analysts a faster path from raw data to the insights that drive accurate seasonal forecasts.