Kinaxis Revolutionizes How Manufacturers Satisfy Customers and Drive Revenue Growth with Launch of On-Demand RapidResponse for Demand Management

Ottawa, Canada (PRWEB) February 19, 2008 -- Kinaxis? Inc., the leading provider of an on-demand Response Management (http://www.kinaxis.com/solutions/index.cfm) service to drive rapid and more profitable response to daily changes in demand, supply and product inside the Sales and Operations Planning (http://www.kinaxis.com/solutions/sales-operations-planning.cfm)(S&OP) horizon, today announced the availability of its new RapidResponse? for Demand Management service.

RapidResponse for Demand Management (http://www.kinaxis.com/products/rapidresponse-demand-management.cfm)is purpose-built for the unique challenges faced by sales, customer service and demand management organizations as they respond to daily, unexpected change while balancing customer satisfaction and operations performance (http://www.kinaxis.com/solutions/operations-performance.cfm)objectives. When combined with the existing RapidResponse? for Manufacturing (http://www.kinaxis.com/products/rapidresponse-manufacturing.cfm) solution, the integrated end-to-end RapidResponse service provides supply chain (http://www.kinaxis.com/products/supply-chain.cfm) teams the tools for risk tradeoff from the individual order or forecast change down to the component supply level.

Despite large investments in Demand Planning, Supply Chain Planning and traditional Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) tools, decision-makers are forced to rely on manual efforts, complicated spreadsheets and other makeshift measures. The S&OP process produces a plan that organizations have difficulty with given the number of daily changes that occur inside the planning horizon. Customer-focused companies have quickly realized they can't "plan" their customers.

As noted by AMR Research, "Traditional closed-loop planning and execution may well be yesterday's news. Thanks to globalization, product proliferation and channel consolidation, discrete manufacturers find themselves in a new era of surprise and compromise." AMR Research continues to say, "In environments where decisions are high in risk and complexity, many find they need systems for collective risk tradeoff and response." - Response Management: Next Wave of Supply Chain Innovation? AMR Research, May 2007.

Kinaxis is addressing this Response Management challenge by empowering front-line decision makers to quickly sense demand and supply misalignments and drive more profitable responses by shaping demand and rapidly allocating finished goods supply accordingly. With RapidResponse for Demand Management, action teams utilize personal alerting, multi-enterprise visibility, collaborative "what-if" analysis and rapid decision support to achieve superior customer service and revenue attainment.

"Most companies are managing demand response across their fulfillment networks by brute force with poor results," says Douglas Colbeth (http://www.kinaxis.com/company/team/president-douglas-colbeth.cfm), Chairman and CEO of Kinaxis. "Achieving excellence in responding to changing customer demands has become the number one challenge facing enterprises today. Solving the Response Management need in demand management and fulfillment operations represents the largest opportunity for companies to increase customer satisfaction, enhance margins and attain more predictable revenue across the entire value chain. Traditional Planning tools are all about what you hope for - RapidResponse enables companies to deal with reality."

Extending the Kinaxis Response Management solution to focus on demand management business challenges has been highly customer-driven. Kinaxis customers have provided strong validation of the distinct needs of the demand management user community and the urgent requirement for a strategic solution to address them.

Qualcomm

"At Qualcomm, our management and sales operations use RapidResponse to dynamically align supply and demand in the face of continually changing circumstances and growing demand," says Lisa Henderson, Senior Director of Information Technology for Qualcomm. "RapidResponse provides us tools to manage these changes as they occur and offers a solution path for future initiatives to provide advanced supply and demand balancing capabilities."

Toshiba Europe GmbH

"Toshiba Europe has used RapidResponse to improve its purchasing, sales and inventory (PSI) process," says Thomas Kossmehl, Senior Expert, IS Division, Toshiba Europe GmbH. "Using RapidResponse, we now have a consistent, succinct PSI process that dramatically enhances our ability to achieve our desired results. With reliable demand and supply data consolidated in one place, we spend significantly less time on data gathering and more time on analysis and decision-making - which is where the business value lies. RapidResponse has enabled Toshiba to be a more responsive organization, providing a level of flexibility never achieved before."

RapidResponse for Demand Management drives many compelling capabilities and benefits:

? Compress the Time to Action Through Proactive, Exception-based Alerts

Exception-based alerts to projected misalignments in demand and supply (e.g., forecast change beyond tolerance, late demand impacting quarter-end, supply disruptions, late customer orders, etc.) enable demand managers and order fulfillment staff to quickly re-align supply and/or engage manufacturing operations to best satisfy customers and meet revenue/margin goals.

? Ensure All Stakeholders Have a Shared View of Business Realities

Fully automated integration of demand and supply data from multiple sources including CRM, ERP, demand planning tools, supply chain management tools, spreadsheets and point-of-sale data, provides a single integrated view of forecast, sales orders, inventory and supply. Information can be organized in role-based views to ensure each stakeholder sees the information pertinent to their specific function.

? Streamline Forecast Collaboration and Consensus

Automated capture, consolidation and roll-up of customer sales forecasts from disparate systems and sources across multiple distribution channels enables quick consensus for forecast development through internal and customer collaboration to speed demand sensing and more profitable demand responses.

? Proactively Resolve Demand and Finished Goods Supply Misalignments

Demand management, sales and customer service staff can proactively resolve demand and supply misalignments and ensure that the right products are in the right place at the right time. Accurate order promise dates are quickly determined and constrained finished goods supply is allocated across multiple distribution channels to best meet customer commitments and revenue/margin objectives. New product introductions can be managed using "what-if" analysis of projected demand/supply changes to ensure a more profitable demand response and to exploit demand-shaping opportunities.

? Power Next Generation Sales and Operations Planning

Quickly analyze the impact of daily demand and supply changes using "what-if" analysis to identify the best operational actions to drive effective response, ensuring S&OP business objectives are achieved. Integrated performance management capabilities proactively evaluate the impact of all decisions against the achievement of defined performance targets.

RapidResponse for Demand Management and the fully integrated and latest version of RapidResponse for Manufacturing are both immediately available.

About Kinaxis

Kinaxis delivers an on-demand Response Management service that enables customer-focused companies to achieve breakthroughs in operations performance and customer satisfaction by rapidly and more profitably responding to constant changes in demand, supply and product. Kinaxis RapidResponse combines personal alerting, multi-enterprise visibility, collaborative "what-if" analysis and rapid decision support to empower front-line supply chain staff with tools for risk tradeoff and response to daily changes inside the Sales and Operations Planning horizon. Global leaders such as Casio, Honeywell, Qualcomm, Raytheon and Toshiba use Kinaxis RapidResponse to establish superior responsiveness within their fulfillment networks and supply chains and gain competitive advantage. For more information, visit the Kinaxis web site at www.kinaxis.com or the company's blog at blog.kinaxis.com (http://blog.kinaxis.com).

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