Demand management as a pursuit, a skill, a function and a set of technologies has grown considerably in importance due to new ways to reach customers and new ways to analyze data about them. Intense competition for product companies and retailers and the squeeze on margins challenge companies to get a lot better at planning.

Discrete manufacturing companies operating with highly complex supply chains in today's volatile business world need collaborative planning and the ability to quickly respond to variances in those plans. They often want to model 'what-if' scenarios to better prepare them for those inevitable hiccups - or new business. Kinaxis designed its RapidResponse solution to help companies with demand and supply balancing, optimized forecasting, and improved supply chain performance. Recently it debuted an enhanced version called RapidResponse Control Tower.

With sales of roughly half a billion dollars, Dorman Products is one of the world's leading manufacturers of automotive parts for the aftermarket, selling more than 100,000 distinct products. The company has experienced sharp growth over the past four years, says director of corporate forecasting Donald H. Mitchell. Recently, it saw the need to transform its demand-planning process, in order to create "a more transparent environment."

ToolsGroup, a vendor of supply-chain planning software, has created an outsourced service which feeds optimized inventory targets to customers.