Sena counts what consumers across a market purchased and records what each outlet held on the day, from real-world data.
Demand planning decides what to hold, make, and replenish for the period ahead. Three patterns bend it before the first review.
One demand figure covers a market whose formats, outlet types, and price tiers pull opposite ways. The plan holds against an average, and cover lands heavily on the segment falling and light on the one climbing.
Where the input series records shipments, the plan optimizes supply against a figure supply already shaped. Every stockout and listing gap in the history carries forward as evidence that buyers wanted less.
The cycle ends in a meeting where commercial, planning, and finance reconcile three views. The number agreed is the number defensible in the room, and its evidence is seniority.
Sena is the decision AI with access to real-world data. It counts what consumers across a market purchased and records what each outlet held on the day, so the demand side of a plan rests on the category itself.
Sena counts purchases across every player in the category, so the series a plan responds to describes the market.
Contributors record what each outlet held and which lines had gone, so a flat week caused by an empty slot reads on its own terms.
Sena reports movement per format, outlet type, and price tier, so the parts of a market keep their directions inside the plan.
A plan holds up on two things: whether the demand series behind it measures the category or one company's shipments, and whether the parts of the market were planned apart before they were added together.
Demand planning turns a view of future demand into the stock, capacity, and replenishment a company commits for the period ahead. It is the response to half of the problem. The projection arrives from forecasting, and the plan decides what to hold against it, at what level, in which market, and by when.
Forecasting is the input, and planning is the response. A planning process running on a forecast built from shipment history optimizes supply against a figure that supply already shaped.
The two terms travel together and answer opposite halves of one problem.
| The question | What it produces | |
|---|---|---|
| Demand forecasting | What will the market buy? | A projection of category demand, per segment and period. |
| Demand planning | What should be held against that? | Stock, capacity, and replenishment decisions. |
Four inputs, collected per market, carry the demand side.
Category purchases and their dates, so the plan answers the demand of the whole market.
What each outlet held that day, which tells wanting apart from availability.
The outlet exactly as the capture found it, with place and time attached.
What buyers state they will buy next, which reaches the stretch of the period history leaves open.
The team’s own numbers form a separate row. Shipment history, open orders, and planning models arrive over 250+ integrations, so own volume reads against the category around it.
Four questions decide whether a plan holds through the period.
Category purchase describes demand. Shipments describe supply meeting demand.
A figure accurate at the market level can be wrong at every format inside it, and replenishment runs against formats.
A flat week from an empty outlet asks for supply. A flat week of soft wanting asks for something else.
A consensus meeting with recorded purchase on the table reaches a different answer from one with three internal views.
Five steps cover the cycle as most teams run it, monthly or weekly.
Assemble history, the current projection, open orders, and anything commercial knows about the period.
Fit trend and seasonality, and produce a baseline per market and per line.
Layer promotions, listings, launches, and known events onto the baseline.
Reconcile commercial, planning, and finance into one committed figure.
Release the plan, then check the miss against what buyers went on to purchase.
Step 5 is where most cycles quietly break. Both return paths look like a review. Only one of them changes the number.
Real people share what they buy and prefer, under explicit consent. Sena captures it directly at the source, so every figure traces back to where it came from whenever a number comes under question.
Consented purchase builds the series, and every segment arrives with the transactions that set its direction.
Sena reports formats, outlet types, and tiers separately, so cover follows the direction each one is moving.
Sena records what the outlet held, so an empty week enters the plan as an availability problem.
Any figure in the demand series opens to the weeks of recorded purchase that produced it.
A plan carries weight only as far as the demand series underneath it. Sena builds every figure from real-world signals captured when the question needs it, from consumers purchasing across the category through to the dated capture a consensus meeting is checked against.
Counts category purchases and their dates, taking in every player selling into that market, so the series describes the market itself.
Reads what each outlet held off images captured in real outlets, which separates an availability gap from a fall in wanting.
Signal arrives from the consumer network under explicit consent. What buyers plan to purchase next comes from the buyers themselves.
Shipment history, open orders, and planning models join over 250+ integrations, so own volume reads against the category around it.
Each point in the series carries its market and its capture date, so a committed figure reopens on what produced it.
Historic plans, revisions, and movement exports load in, so every period the team has committed sits together.
Four teams meet at the same committed figure, and each one needs a different cut of it before they can act.
The committed figure. Needs a series built on category purchase, per segment.
The capacity. Needs a level matching what production is built around.
The market view. Needs evidence for the number brought to consensus.
The reconciliation. Needs a miss opened to what buyers purchased.
The same demand series, read against whatever each industry treats as a segment.
Category purchase by format and price tier, with outlet availability alongside.
Purchase by specification and price band, with the replacement cycle buyers state.
Pack size movement at the counter, and the weeks a line kept running absent.
Handset and tariff movement between operators, period over period.
One mechanism, applied per market and per category. Each step is documented, which is what makes a committed figure defensible.
Real contributors share what they buy and pay under explicit consent and record what each outlet held in the markets named.
Sena builds a dated series of category purchases per segment, with availability recorded alongside it.
Each format, outlet type, and tier carries its own direction into the cycle, with the captures attached.
Most planning cycles respond to the one demand series a company holds in full, which is its own shipment history. Sena measures the category that history sits inside.
| Capability area | Typical setup | Sena |
|---|---|---|
| The input series | Own shipments and orders. | Category purchases counted across the whole market, player by player. |
| Demand against availability | Combined in one figure. | Held apart, with the outlet record dated to the day. |
| Planning level | Market total, split downward by rules. | Each format, outlet type, and tier carrying its own series. |
| What settles consensus | Three internal views and a meeting. | Recorded purchase on the table, opened to the receipts. |
| New buyers | Inferred from a lift in the total. | Counted, so new-buyer growth and frequency growth stay apart. |
| Reviewing a miss | Checked against the previous revision. | Opened to what buyers purchased in those weeks. |
| What comes back | A committed figure for the period. | A demand series per segment, with the dates and records behind it. |
Three situations where a market-built series changes the committed figure.
Carry every format and price tier forward in its own direction, so the cover follows the segment it serves.
Bring the recorded purchase to the reconciliation so the committed figure rests on evidence three teams can open.
Open the period to what buyers purchased in it, so the next cycle inherits a correction worth having.
A committed figure sets what the network has to deliver. The four decisions below are what a supply chain team runs around it.
Every supply chain decision Sena answers, in one place
Where the cover sits
Ranks markets on how fast recorded purchase moved, which points the plan.
Explore inventory optimization 02The network around the plan
Sets route, cover, and service level against the same demand series.
Explore supply chain optimization 03Checking the plan afterward
Sets committed volume beside what the market went on to absorb.
Explore supply chain analytics 04Why a week ran flat
Records what each outlet held, so an empty week reads as an empty week.
Explore supply chain visibilityThe walkthrough builds a dated demand series for one category in one market, splits it by format and outlet type, and opens the purchases behind any point in the series while the team watches.
Name the category and the markets it sells in, and we will build the demand series behind it.