Skip to main content
Advantive

Inform ERP’s Newish Features for Demand Management

By Grace Barton Updated

Welcome back to the final installment of the DDI System blog series. Over the past several weeks, we’ve explored many of the ways Inform ERP simplifies demand management, streamlines purchasing, and helps you run a more efficient business. Today, we’re diving into some relatively new, yet incredibly useful features for demand management that you may not know about.

These features include:

  • Customizing forecast parameters at the warehouse level
  • Excluding certain forecast formulas from being used
  • Excluding demand for a customer or ship-to record

Let’s unpack these features and see how they can make a big impact on your operations.

The “Newish” Features in Demand Management

We’re calling these features “newish” since they’ve been introduced in recent versions of Inform ERP, but not necessarily in the latest major releases. If you’ve been a long-time user of tools like Projected Purchase Orders, these features are worth noting!

Customize Forecast Parameters at the Warehouse Level

When Inform ERP first launched, forecast parameters were applied company wide. This meant every warehouse in your database had the same forecasting rules, regardless of differing inventory needs.

Now, you can customize forecast parameters at the warehouse level. It allows you to fine-tune your forecasting to reflect each warehouse’s unique inventory profile, ensuring accuracy and avoiding unnecessary purchases.

Exclude Certain Forecast Formulas from Being Used

Early on, Inform ERP automatically assigned forecast formulas to products based on the types of demand, which we talked about in one of our earlier blogs. This created challenges for businesses that didn’t carry or have seasonal products, as we didn’t have any way to stop the system from assigning specific formulas to specific items.

Inform ERP now allows you to exclude certain forecast formulas from being applied to your inventory. You’ll see a list of all available formulas within the forecast parameters. Simply uncheck the formulas you don’t want the system to assign. Inform ERP won’t consider assigning the specific formula to your products.

Exclude Demand for a Customer or Ship-To Record

The last feature we want to highlight is the ability to exclude demand for a customer or ship-to record. Imagine you had a really large customer who primarily purchased 10 of your high-volume products that is no longer doing business with you.

Without this feature, Inform ERP might still forecast demand for those products based on the customer’s previous purchase history.  You can check a box in the Customer Record in the General tab or directly on the Ship-To Record to turn this feature on. It will exclude that customer’s historical demand from your forecasting calculations and automatically adjust demand for those products. This helps you avoid over-purchasing and improve inventory accuracy.

These features can help you ensure forecasting aligns with your specific operational needs, avoid unnecessary purchases, and increase efficiency by simplifying the demand process. While seemingly small, they pack a big punch when it comes to optimizing your forecasting and purchasing workflows.

Thank You for Following our DDI System Blog Series!

We want to thank you for joining us on this journey through the powerful features of Inform ERP. Our goal has been to help you gain deeper insights into our distribution ERP so you can stock more effectively, minimize deadstock, and reduce purchasing time.

If you missed any of our previous blogs, check them out below.

  1. Understanding Reorder Point vs Reorder Quantity in Inform ERP
  2. Exploring Critical Inventory & Projected Purchase Orders in Inform ERP
  3. Managing Different Categories of Demand in Inform ERP
  4. Tracking Purchasing Results with Inform ERP’s KPIs and Pivot Tables
  5. Unlocking the Full Potential of Inform ERP’s Forecasting Adjustments
  6. Leveraging Inform ERP’s Warehouse Stock & Projected Stock Transfer
  7. Walking Through Inform ERP’s Special Purchasing Scenarios

Want to learn more about Inform ERP? Schedule a demo with our knowledgeable team to see how our distribution ERP can transform your operations!

Grace Barton

Marketing Specialist

About the Author Latest Posts

Grace Barton is a digital marketing and competitive intelligence professional who crafts strategic narratives by bridging marketing insights with analytical expertise. At Advantive, she creates engaging, data-driven content tailored to the distribution, manufacturing, packaging, and quality industries. Her goal is to deliver impactful messaging that drives engagement and growth based on specific gap closure needs, whether responding to sales organization requirements, pinpointing gaps in content, or meeting immediate market trends.
She thrives on transforming competitive intelligence into actionable insights for the sales organization. Grace manages Advantive’s competitive intelligence platform, Klue, to equip the sales team with the battlecards and market data they need to stay ahead of competitors. Since launch, she’s built 28+ battlecards across four lines of business, ensuring the GTM strategy stays sharp.
Grace has a passion for leveraging market insights with storytelling to guide strategic decision-making, empower sales organizations, and nurture organizational growth.

Areas of Expertise: Digital Marketing, Competitive Intelligence, Strategic Narratives, Marketing Insights, Analytical Expertise

LinkedIn

Editorial standards

Fact-checking & editorial guidelines

Every article on advantive.com is written and reviewed against an internal accuracy standard before publication. Here's what that means in practice.

  • Product claims are verified by the brand team that owns the platform.

    When an article references InfinityQS, WinSPC, PQ Systems, Pinpoint, ParityFactory, ProPlanner, KiwiPlan, DDI System, VeraCore, or any of Advantive's other specialty platforms, the relevant product team checks technical statements about features, deployment, and current capability before the article goes live.

  • External statistics cite their source inline.

    When an article references industry survey results, regulatory benchmarks, or third-party research, the source is linked at the point of citation. Statements without an inline source link are first-party observations drawn from Advantive's product teams or customer base.

  • Publication and revision dates stay visible.

    The original publication date and the most recent revision date are both shown on every article. Topics that change quickly — AI capabilities, regulatory rules, product roadmaps — are revisited on a tighter cadence than evergreen reference content.

  • Corrections are issued openly.

    If a factual error is reported, the article is updated, the revision date advances, and material corrections are noted at the bottom of the article so readers can see what changed and when.

Found something wrong, or have a citation to add? Get in touch with the editorial team and we'll review it.

Subject-matter review

Reviewed by subject-matter experts

Advantive is a portfolio of 14+ specialty software platforms — each one built and maintained by a product team that has spent years inside a specific manufacturing or distribution discipline. Articles in technical channels are reviewed by the relevant team before publication.

  • Quality & SPC content

    Reviewed by the InfinityQS, WinSPC, and PQ Systems product teams — the platforms behind statistical process control, capability analysis, and gage management deployments across food, automotive, pharma, and CPG manufacturers.

  • Manufacturing operations & MES content

    Reviewed by the PINpoint, ProPlanner, ParityFactory, and VIA Information Tools teams, whose platforms run production scheduling, traceability, and shop-floor execution for discrete, automotive, and food-and-beverage manufacturers.

  • Packaging & converter content

    Reviewed by the KiwiPlan, Abaca, and AdvantZware teams, who build software specifically for corrugated, folding-carton, and packaging-converter operations.

  • Distribution, ERP & B2B commerce content

    Reviewed by the DDI System (inFORM ERP), Distribution One, VeraCore, Pepperi, and Commerce Vision teams, whose platforms run wholesale ERP, fulfillment, field sales, and B2B portals for specialty distributors and 3PLs.

Are you a practitioner with domain expertise to contribute? Get in touch — we accept guest contributions from operators in the industries we serve.