As a small and midsized business (SMB), you’re the bread and butter of the global economy.
You create jobs, introduce innovations, and stabilize communities. According to the United Nations, you make up:- 90% of businesses
- 60-70% of employment
- 50% of GDP worldwide
Being the backbone of the world’s financial success is a complex, challenging responsibility made even more challenging by constant pressures, like high costs, a lack of qualified employees, and supply chain issues.
Another huge pressure?
Predicting future customer demand so that you have enough, but not too much, product to fulfill orders and ensure the cash keeps flowing. And the pressure intensifies if you’re using outdated tools and following obsolete rules, making demand planning a groan-worthy task.
But groan no more!
With the right AI demand planning tool, you have what it takes to turn forecasting woes into forecasting wows while turning the demand planning rulebook on its head.
How the Old Forecasting Rules are Breaking Down
Manual forecasting, spreadsheet models, and even basic ERP forecasting were built for a slower, more predictable era where you could rely on traditional forecasting to keep your inventory balanced. However, omnichannel demand, supply chain disruptions, and customer expectations have made the old way of doing things insufficient.
You’re leaving money on the table through stockouts, overstock, and inefficient cash allocation as a result of traditional forecasting’s limitations. That’s why many of today’s product businesses are turning to AI for help.
AI ingests and analyzes more data than humans or traditional systems can, and in the case of inventory management, AI demand planning is breaking all the rules.
How AI is Rewriting the Demand Planning Rulebook
AI isn’t just improving demand planning; it’s fundamentally rewriting how product businesses plan, replenish, and grow.
AI detects patterns and signals stemming from seasonal shifts, sales velocity changes, and market trends faster than we as humans ever could (or want to). It improves accuracy and reduces the guesswork that can cause costly mistakes. And modern AI tools continuously learn, ensuring you’re learning (and remembering what you learned) too.
That critical information you figured out last year and told yourself to remember this year but didn’t? Your AI demand planning tool ensures you won’t forget! It’s the best friend/built-in memory tool you didn’t know you needed.
AI demand planning tools help you make decisions faster, reduce forecasting errors, and stock shelves with the right items at the right time. You’ll also have happier finance and ops teams (making you happier). And those old demand planning rules you’ve been living under? They no longer apply.
See for yourself!
Old Rule #1: You plan monthly or quarterly.
→ New Rule: Forecasts update continuously based on real-time performance.
Old Rule #2: You forecast only using last year’s sales.
→ New Rule: AI uses dozens of data points, including promotions, seasonality, velocity, marketplace trends, and anomalies.
Old Rule #3: You reorder when inventory hits a threshold.
→ New Rule: AI predicts the right inventory level and notifies you when to reorder.
Old Rule #4: You need a full forecasting team or outside analysts.
→ New Rule: AI runs the analysis for you, so teams stay lean.
Old Rule #5: ERPs are required for advanced forecasting.
→ New Rule: Modern platforms like Cin7 deliver ERP-level forecasting at lower cost and complexity.
Which AI Demand Planning Tools Fit Your Evolving Inventory Needs
AI demand planning tools help reduce manual mistakes, inventory guessing games, and inventory memory lapses. But what you may not know is that not all AI demand planning tools are created equal.
Many (if not most) forecasting tools fail because they don’t natively connect to your inventory management system. They act as a “siloed” application that doesn’t allow data from your sales channels, purchasing, and warehousing departments to connect with your forecasting tool. Which results in a lack of communication and collaboration across your organization.
What does that look like? Well, that inventory you thought you needed but didn’t? It’s sitting on your warehouse shelf, sad and lonely because it didn’t sell like you anticipated. Or that inventory everyone wanted? It’s not there, sad, lonely, or otherwise.
ForesightAI
ForesightAI, Cin7’s demand forecasting tool, was built to bring real science to demand forecasting. With machine learning as its foundation, Cin7’s AI demand planning tool takes up to two years of your sales history, runs it through approximately 100 inventory forecasting algorithms, and averages the outputs to produce a highly accurate, SKU-level forecast you can depend on.
Bringing forecasting, budgeting, and POs into one system as well as tying forecasting directly to replenishment workflow, ForesightAI will also:
- Identify sales trends as well as winners (top products), losers (products not selling), and chasers (products attracting customers but not top products…yet).
- Calculate optimal reorder points and replenishment quantities automatically.
- Suggest POs directly within Cin7, reducing manual work.
- Trigger POs, which are embedded in the system, at the right moments.
- Give ops teams actionable insights—no data science background required!
The result? Less carrying costs, fewer stockouts, improved working capital, and smoother purchasing operations.
But that’s not all!
With Cin7’s ForesightAI, you can expect accuracy without complexity and automation that reduces your workload. It gives you faster, smarter replenishment leading to stronger cash flow and profitability. Ultimately, ForesightAI is a difference maker for every product seller who wants to replace their disconnected forecasting tools with a single source of truth. It works seamlessly with Cin7’s modules and saves you time without the need for ops analysts.
Cin7 customer CaliWoods experienced the amazing benefits of Cin7 and ForesightAI firsthand.
Founder and owner Shay Lawrence describes Cin7’s AI demand planning tool as “super, super helpful,” and says, “ForesightAI lets me see what we have in stock and know what we need to order per supplier with a click of a button. We’re able to make sure that our stock is accurate to the day. It takes the manual errors out of it, it saves us time, and it saves us money in terms of not running out of stock or not ordering too much.”
She adds: “It’s also interesting to see which products are winners, losers, or chasers. The data tells you what you don’t know. For example, one of our winners was a personal care product that I never would have thought would be one, and it made us take a closer look at what’s moving fast, and which ones are profitable.”
Are you ready to transform your inventory management and demand planning processes with ForesightAI, reducing your risk, increasing margins, and improving scalability along the way? If so, request a Cin7 demo today!
