Plan the demand, the load and the journey as one decision
Forecasting, load planning and journey planning are the same question asked three ways: what will sell, what should go on the vehicle, and who visits which outlet when. DigiTS Planning answers them against the same secondary sales history — so the forecast actually shapes the load, and the load actually fits the route.
Demand plan · Q4
Dairy · Route cluster DXB-North
Forecast vs actual
Forecast accuracy
—
Bias
—
Next period
+6%
Suggested load · tomorrow
Journey plan · weekly cycle
38 outlets · 4-week cycle · 100% covered
What Planning replaces on day one
The practical difference between running this process on paper and spreadsheets, and running it on DigiTS.
Forecasts built in a spreadsheet once a quarter
Rolling forecasts from actual secondary sales history
Load decided by whatever fitted yesterday
Suggested load derived from the forecast and open orders
Journey plans that drift until nobody trusts them
Coverage cycles measured against what was actually visited
Three teams planning from three different numbers
One data set behind demand, load and coverage
No way to tell whether the plan was any good
Plan versus actual reviewed every cycle
Everything in Planning & Forecasting
22 capabilities across 4 areas — configured to your operation rather than switched on wholesale.
01
Demand & sales forecasting
Forecasts built from what the trade actually bought, not from what head office hoped it would.
Forecasts from secondary sales
Base the plan on outlet-level sell-out history rather than primary shipments.
Forecast by SKU, route and period
Plan at the level decisions are actually made, then roll it up.
Seasonality and trend
Account for recurring seasonal patterns and underlying growth or decline.
Promotion uplift
Model the lift a planned scheme is expected to produce, and hold it separate from baseline.
Manual override with approval
Let planners adjust a number, with the change and its owner recorded.
Accuracy and bias tracking
Measure forecast against actual each period so the process improves rather than repeats.
02
Load planning
The forecast is only useful if it decides what goes on the vehicle in the morning.
Suggested load from forecast and orders
Turn demand and confirmed orders into a proposed load per vehicle or route.
Min-max levels per vehicle
Hold the right depth of each SKU on each van rather than a flat rule.
Capacity and weight limits
Keep the proposed load inside what the vehicle can physically carry.
Short-dated stock prioritisation
Push stock nearing expiry into loads while it still has selling life.
Warehouse pick output
Hand the approved load to the warehouse as a pick list rather than a conversation.
Requested versus suggested
Show where a rep asked for something different, and why.
03
Journey planning
A territory turned into a repeatable, measurable schedule — and kept honest afterwards.
Permanent journey plans
Build weekly and monthly coverage cycles across every route and rep.
Frequency by outlet class
Visit an A-class outlet more often than a D-class one, by rule rather than by habit.
Territory balancing
Compare workload across reps so one territory is not quietly twice the size of another.
Capacity versus workload
Check that the plan fits the working day before it is published.
Missed-visit recovery
Roll uncompleted calls into the following day rather than losing them.
Geo-based sequencing
Order the day by proximity using the geo-tagged outlet master.
04
Targets, review & re-planning
Planning is a cycle, not a document. This is the part most operations skip.
Targets by rep, route and SKU
Set the numbers the field is measured against, derived from the same plan.
Plan versus actual
Compare forecast, load, coverage and sales once the period has run.
Coverage achievement
Measure planned visits against visits genuinely completed, GPS-stamped.
Rolling re-forecast
Adjust the remaining periods as actuals arrive instead of waiting for the next cycle.
What operations teams notice first
Fewer stock-outs on the van
Loads built from forecast demand rather than yesterday's leftovers.
Less dead stock
Planning what will sell reduces the slow-moving inventory that ends up written off.
Coverage that holds
Cycles measured against completed visits stop plans quietly decaying.
Forecasts that improve
Tracking accuracy and bias each period turns planning into a process rather than a ritual.
Planning works with the rest of the platform
Same customers, same SKUs, same pricing — so adding a module is configuration, not a second integration project.
Planning & Forecasting — common questions
How is this different from the journey planning already in SFA?
SFA executes the plan: it puts today's calls in the rep's hand, sequences them and measures what was completed. Planning builds the plan centrally — coverage cycles, visit frequency by outlet class, territory balance and workload capacity across the whole field force. The plan is created here and executed there, on the same data.
What does the forecast use as its input?
Secondary sales — what outlets actually bought — rather than primary shipments into the channel, because primary tells you what you dispatched, not what the market absorbed. Where DigiTS SFA or the B2B portal is deployed, that history is already being captured transaction by transaction.
Does load planning replace the load request from the field?
No, it informs it. Planning proposes a load from forecast demand, open orders and min-max levels per vehicle. Reps can still raise load requests, and the system shows where requested and suggested differ so the gap is a conversation rather than a surprise at the warehouse.
How does this relate to Dynamic Dispatch?
Planning decides what should be sold and carried over a cycle; Dispatch solves a specific day's orders into optimal routes across the fleet. Planning is the medium-term view, Dispatch the daily one. They complement each other and neither requires the other.
See Planning running your operation
A 30-minute walkthrough using your product hierarchy, your pricing rules and one of your real routes — not a generic demo dataset.
Or email sales@digitsrtm.com