Spreadsheets offer short-term benefits like low cost, ease of use and availability. Everyone you work with has access to view, modify or create spreadsheets. However, these seeming advantages come at a cost. Many in-depth studies have concluded spreadsheets are riddled with errors; it is just part of working in spreadsheets. Typically these are transposed numbers – human error. In general, the errors seem to occur in a few percent of all cells. That means a large spreadsheet is certain to contain several errors.

Ask yourself when was the last time you were confident in the accuracy of every cell in every page of a spreadsheet? The impact of a single error, much less multiple errors, can derail a forecast, cause a supplier to ship too much or too little of a particular product, or lead to customer service nightmares.

In the same survey we found 37% of respondents rely on their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to manage Demand Planning. ERP systems have very rudimentary planning capabilities. With a few exceptions, they are designed to be the recipient of the forecast not the developer.

Surprisingly, 84% turn to basic tools to manage their Demand Planning needs. Spreadsheets and ERP systems cannot generate an accurate forecast or support best-in-class supply chain processes such as sales and operations planning (S&OP), inventory optimization or vendor managed inventory (VMI). They pose a significant challenge when you have multiple users who will need to share the data or have a large volume of SKUs. Today’s complex supply chains require timely and accurate data to anticipate market changes and respond quickly to unforeseen events.

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