TrueDemand Software Inc., a relative newcomer in the supply-chain management field, has tapped VeriSign Inc. to provide RFID and point-of-sale data that will provide historical insights to help guide its suite of demand-forecasting applications.
The main tenet behind TrueDemand's supply-chain software is that manufacturers who adjust inventory levels based on point-of-sale (POS) data do so too late in the game. The company believes that forecast planning is the answer -- accommodating demand before it even exists.
TrueDemand's software suite seeks to divine the vicissitudes of customer demand through the use of algorithms and formulas, analyzing data patterns that remain hidden to the human eye. Through technology developed by an accomplished scientific team, TrueDemand's software extracts the main elements from a partial set of event data and, according to the Los Gatos, CA company, uses that to improve on a manufacturer's sales forecast.
The VeriSign (Mountain View, CA) partnership extends TrueDemand's ability to forecast by providing reliable, and secure data to its applications. The reliability part is key, according to Raymond Blanchard, vice president of business development and co-founder of TrueDemand. Data security management, he said, is the most formidable challenge in RFID deployments.
"The biggest value-add is security," he said of the VeriSign partnership, in an interview with Managing Automation.
Of course, another challenge of the smart supply chain is putting its intelligence to good use. Bringing in a terabyte of data from the RFID system is impressive, Blanchard said, but without the tools needed to paint a picture of its implications, it becomes clutter.
"RFID data itself doesn't add a lot of value," he noted.
What does add value is actionable analysis. Blanchard said TrueDemand's products map the deployment of a product, predict the sales, set the replenishment forecast, and more.
"Not a lot of the ERP systems off the shelf provide that mapping," he pointed out.
Why did the company choose a network application such as VeriSign's Intelligent Supply Chain Services platform? Blanchard maintained that current tools for supply chain visibility are not well designed for collaboration between the manufacturer and the retailer.
With VeriSign's help, he said, TrueDemand ensures that "at the end of the promotion the manufacturers and the retailers can have the same view."
VeriSign's attractiveness as a partner in such a deal grew significantly in October 2005, when it purchased Retail Solutions Inc. (RSI), a specialist in delivering point-of-sale data to a diverse roster of global companies, including Unilever and GlaxoSmithKline.
Likewise, the coincident announcement of VeriSign's partnership with the Worldwide Retail Exchange (WWRE) also enhanced VeriSign's status as a go-to source for secure data sharing. In the WWRE deal, VeriSign agreed to provide the secure infrastructure that allows suppliers and retailers to share valuable point-of-sale and product information.
According to TrueDemand's Blanchard, the latest partnership creates numerous benefits for its customers: increased speed of product deployment, verifiable security of deployment, a single source for POS & RFID data, and an application that can use it proactively.
Since acquiring funding for its business last year, TrueDemand has been building out its product suite. With the added functionality enabled by the VeriSign partnership, the company plans to deliver the first version of its Predictive Solutions application to the market within the next month.