ToolsGroup’s COVID-19 Action Center Offers Support for Swift and Efficient Response to Supply Chain Disruptions

BOSTON (May 5, 2020) ToolsGroup, a global leader in supply chain planning software, today announced a new online COVID-19 Supply Chain Action Center and resources to help companies quickly respond to Coronavirus risks and speed supply chain recovery. Along with its AI-driven demand forecasting and inventory planning software, ToolsGroup has introduced new customer support offerings for COVID-19 planning as well as educational resources including the ebook “COVID-19 Risk: Enable Swift and Efficient Response to Supply Chain Disruptions.”

Unpredictable behavior in response to macro events creates demand volatility in every link of our global supply chain. It’s not just disruptive events like pandemics that lead to chaos; it’s the way people react to them. Whether you’re unable to meet escalating demand with your existing inventory, or concerned about spoilage, ToolsGroup solutions including demand forecasting, demand sensing and inventory optimization help companies assess changing demand and re-evaluate service levels and stocking decisions to combat both scarcity and spoilage.

ToolsGroup’s COVID-19 Action Center:

• Provides steps planners can take now to meet service goals and speed recovery
• Highlights enhanced customer support including scenario simulation and KPI monitoring and benchmarking to help companies to be ready for anything
• Offers educational resources and stories of how global supply chains are responding to COVID

Companies Share COVID-19 Response

According to Mark Chandler, senior vice president, supply chain at American Tire Distributors (ATD), “Prior to using ToolsGroup we had a rather simple model of looking at the last three months of sales and coming up with a forecast. Today, with ToolsGroup, we have a significantly more robust forecasting process based on internal and external collaboration inputs, and world-class forecasting algorithms. We benchmark ourselves against the leaders in our industry on a monthly basis and we are constantly beating their forecast accuracy metrics. We truly have best-in-class demand planning teams, processes and tools. I couldn’t imagine facing this COVID-19 period without these great capabilities.”

For McDonald’s Mesoamérica, the primary challenges with COVID-19 are reduction in volume and forecast uncertainty. With ToolsGroup, the company can see all inventory by warehouse, location and item, in near real time. The team is currently working on short-term forecasting. Instead of relying on four years of information, they use two days of information to model the realities of COVID-19. These tools have made the company very efficient in making these kinds of decisions. “ToolsGroup as software and an asset, it has been a great tool,” said Rafael Labbé, supply chain director at Suministros y Alimentos, a distributor to McDonald’s Mesoamérica. “It gives you great visibility of the whole inventory. It’s predicting the forecast as has never been done before, and it has fantastic visual tools that the team is using to make some decisions.”

ToolsGroup CEO Joseph Shamir commented, “With a crisis like COVID-19, planning for the usual is impossible, and lesser disruptions than this have brought unprepared companies to their knees. At ToolsGroup we’re all about being ready for anything–even the unpredictable. Our commitment is to help our customers achieve target service levels while optimizing inventory, even with complex supply chains and constantly changing demand.”

Visit our COVID-19 Action Center to download these and other supply chain planning resources:

• EBook: “COVID-19 Risk: Enable Swift and Efficient Response to Supply Chain Disruptions”
• Video: McDonald’s Mesoamérica Supply Chain Response to COVID-19
• Blog: American Tire Distributors’ (ATD) Supply Chain Response to COVID-19
• Blog: Using Digital Supply Chain Planning to Respond to Market-Changing Disruptions like COVID-19
• Book a demand and inventory planning demo with a ToolsGroup solution expert

About ToolsGroup

ToolsGroup is how organizations achieve their target service levels while optimizing inventory, no matter how complex their supply chain is or how much demand changes. In a world that never follows the rules, organizations have to be ready for anything–from the challenges of multi-echelon inventory optimization to the endless surprises of sporadic demand. To do this, they have to predict more behaviors, protect against surprises, and perform more efficiently. Only ToolsGroup makes all this possible. That’s why global leaders like Absolut, BP and Harley-Davidson continue to rely on us year after year. Visit www.toolsgroup.com and follow us on Twitter @ToolsGroup.