Cuneyt Eroglu
Assistant Professor

Supply Chain and Information Management Group,
D'Amore-McKim School of Business,
Northeastern University

Demand management is one of those essential business functions that every business professional has to know at least a little about regardless of whether they work in marketing, production, finance, or human resources. Sales forecasting and demand management form the foundation for all planning processes. Demand management is also one of those areas that companies continue to struggle with. No matter how good a company is in demand management, there still appears to be more room for improvement. When it comes to demand management, the journey to excellence seems to be an endless one.

In this book, Charlie Chase takes the reader on a journey to excellence in demand management. As a thought leader in this area, he provides a comprehensive and expertly written treatment of demand management for guiding business professionals. He first explains why demand management can be such a challenge for many companies. He then provides a sound framework on which companies can structure or redesign their demand management practices. He addresses many critical issues that are ignored in other books on this topic. He writes about and addresses, among others things, what kind of skills people in demand management should have, what kind of organization is needed for demand management, how to make sense of predictive and descriptive analytics, and how to take advantage of big data and new technologies.

Unlike many other books on the same topic, Charlie provides a big-picture approach to demand management. Based on many years of experience, he integrates strategic, tactical, as well as operational aspects of demand management. Consequently, this book contains useful insights for everyone from an analyst to a manager to a senior executive. Yet as Charlie writes about the different aspects of demand management, he also provides a unifying vision: The goal of demand management is not to increase forecast accuracy; it is to foster sales growth. This is a truly unique and insightful observation.

As my undergraduate students would say, Charlie “keeps it real.” He carefully chooses the most applicable parts of the theory that have direct applications in the real world of demand management. Readers can directly apply what they learn from this book. The concepts are illustrated by relevant real-life examples, which make them so much easier to understand and apply. Charlie is also careful in avoiding unnecessary theoretical details that are not applicable or that readers can learn on their own. The practical approach taken in this book makes it an excellent choice for practicing managers.

Before I finish, I must say something about SAS. I admit that I am biased in favor of SAS as I have been using it over two decades. As a company, SAS has been on the forefront of demand management not only because of its technological capabilities but also because it chose to integrate business insights of thought leaders like Charlie in their software. This makes SAS the ideal platform for the readers to implement the framework that Charlie has built based on his extensive experience in demand management over many years. In summary, this book is a gem for all who are interested in demand management, including the students in my future forecasting classes.