Demand Signal Repository

For today's CPG, a key technology in the IT infrastructure is the Demand Signal Repository or DSR. A Demand Signal Repository (DSR) is a demand data warehouse of retailer and consumer demand activity, including demand planning, replenishment, merchandising, sales, and marketing. Although often known as a "POS demand data warehouse", a Demand Signal Repository (DSR) extends well beyond retail POS by merging many varied sources of information, such as syndicated data, ERP shipments, demographics, budgets, retailer forecasts, trade promotions and much more.

At the core of the Velocity Solution Suite is a powerful Demand Signal Repository (DSR) that grows in concert with your needs. It cleanses and harmonizes demand data from all of your customers into a robust relational data warehouse, and provides multi-level analyses to your users. It is also a source of information to your other enterprise applications.

Features critical for a successful enterprise Demand Signal Repository (DSR) include:

• Robust, Scalable Data Warehouse Architecture
  • Normalized Relational Databases
  • Open databases
  • Multiple database instances
• Granularity at the Lowest Possible Level of Demand
  • Item
  • Store
  • Week or Day
  • Retailer
• Integration of Multiple Sources
  • POS Data or Demand Signal Data
  • Inventory And Replenishment Factors
  • Forecasts
  • Shipments
  • Syndicated Data and Demographics
  • Costs
  • Trade Promotion Events
  • Other 3rd party data
• Powerful ETL Toolset
  • Data Cleansing, Normalization
  • Native EDI Import
  • Support for AS2 Downloads
  • Data suspense and reprocessing
• Automated Processing
• Harmonization and Analysis Across Accounts
  • User security by retailer
  • Fiscal calendar by retailer
  • Customer item code cross referencing
  • Dynamic dimensions
  • Dimensions adapt to retailer being analyzed
• Support For International Data
  • Tradacom, EDIFACT and XML
  • Multiple currencies
  • Currency Exchange Rates
• Extensible Architecture
  • Add new measures and master data
  • Create unlimited numbers of dimensions
  • Special processing functions and calculations

Velocity is the enterprise Demand Signal Repository (DSR) from which all aspects of your supply/demand chain can be managed across all of your accounts and channels. Velocity gives you access to over 250 global retailer and distributor demand signal sources, accepting raw customer EDI, Tradacom, or EDIFACT standard interchanges, retailer portal demand signal data, flat files, proprietary files, and spreadsheets. Velocity cleanses, normalizes and stores information in a relational data warehouse, and provides open access to its own BI toolset and other third-party BI applications such as SharePoint / PerformancePoint (MOSS), Excel, Cognos, Business Objects, SAP BW and many others.

Velocity's extensive experience and proficiency with demand signal data provides answers in virtually real-time. Having easy access to multiple retail accounts enables retail suppliers to not only analyze by account but also by channel, region, market, territory and much more.

Unlike most other Demand Signal Repository (DSR) solutions, Velocity manages the entire process of cleansing and harmonizing retail POS demand data, including EDI, AS2, and proprietary sources. Velocity automatically loads and updates the most granular level of demand data every day from all of your demand signal data sources, affording you the luxury and value of having the most current information at your fingertips every morning.

Velocity also takes care of "normalizing" all the demand signal data so that valid comparisons can be made across retailers and channels. The ETL processing of the Demand Signal Repository (DSR) cleanses the demand data, provides default values for omitted demand data and prepares the demand data for storage and subsequent analysis.

Add new measures and dimensions to your Demand Signal Repository (DSR) as your requirements expand. Velocity's open architecture allows you to add and support new demand signal data sources. Velocity's "hook procedures" allow you to add new processing and summarization capabilities for new features and special analyses. For example, if a retailer does not provide comp store sales, you can setup Velocity to calculate them for you.

Velocity's security measures are in sync with all major retail accounts. Access to retailers is controlled by Velocity's strict security system to insure only authorized individuals can view specific retailers' demand signal data. Additional security measures restrict access to data by account and protect data provided for category management purposes from exposure to the rest of the company.

Velocity also complies vehemently to Wal-Mart's strict data-sharing policy requiring that all critical POS demand signal and inventory data always resides behind the retail supplier's firewalls.

Velocity eliminates the need to create or purchase EDI translation and transaction maps. With its native importing of EDI 852 (POS or demand signal activity data), EDI 867 (Reseller activity), EDI 830 (forecasts), and EDI 816 (store information), Velocity is ready to load EDI data "out of the box" to combat the inconsistency of retailers implementing EDI transactions differently, especially the EDI 852 (POS or demand signal activity data) transaction.

Velocity parses and interprets EDI 852 transactions by applying many different algorithms to the structure and contents of the transaction. Each customer can be configured to decode their 852 correctly. Velocity's proprietary EDI importing supports over 250 retailers and distributors, both domestic and international.

While many other Demand Signal Repository (DSR) solutions address speed issues by settling for downloading summary data, Velocity brings down the raw POS elements and does it quickly. The best-in-class, built-in translation algorithms allow Velocity to accomplish in hours what takes others days. Since store and item level demand signal (POS) and inventory data is stored in the database, users have the flexibility to do all their analysis on the fly, drilling down as needed, adding calculations, changing time frames, etc. without ever having to wait for data to be reloaded or reprocessed.