Who owns the Forecast?

Demand Planning as a function relies on customer information and sales intelligence that provides insights into customer activity.

Most companies have a two-tiered organization.

• Customer Demand Planners who plan the demand at the SKU/Customer level. In some organizations, sales planners perform this role.
• Product Demand Planners who are responsible for the total product forecast at the SKU/Warehouse level. They may be responsible for overseeing the Statistical model-generated forecasts and for interfacing with the supply planners and to run the Demand Consensus process. One of the worst practices is to NOT have this role and pass this role to the Supply planner.

The dilemma is typically who owns the forecast? What are the product level planners responsible for? Do they abandon the customer level forecast?

Companies have antiquated processes and systems that may have degenerated over the years - to the point where Customer level forecasts are not even passed into the national DP group. And national Demand Planners at times ignore the aggregated key customer forecast in the pretext of forecast bias from Sales.

What is your experience?