DemandCaster's Advanced Business Planning application is an application designed to  support business planning processes such as S&OP, SIOP, and IBP to name a few. The application includes the Event Planning, Scenario Planning, and the inclusion of external data such as POS and other external forecast data through the optional Market Forecast Manager add-on.

Key benefits of the Advanced Business Planning application are as follows:

1. Flexibility: The forecast hierarchy and the demand plan hierarchy are separate and flexible. This allows for the creation of one rigid forecasting hierarchy and many demand planning hierarchy pages.
2. Hierarchy Builder: You may forecast based on any combination of hierarchical levels including locations since the underlying database data is coded with three primary attributes - item, location, and customer - otherwise know as the PCL. The demand planning views can be pivoted to any combination of levels.
3. Pages: Clicking the tool icon in Demand Plan allows the creation of multiple Demand Plan pages each with their own hierarchy. Demand Plan pages are user specific.

The Advanced Business Planning application only affects the forecasting and demand planning portion of Supply Chain Planning. Supply Planning and Approval steps follow Demand Planning and are covered in the following sections:

• Supply Planning
• Approval