The customer groups function allows users to create a grouping of individual customers. This grouping in turn replaces the individual customers with an aggregate definition of demand. It is particularly helpful in Demand Planning as a means to focus the forecasting on larger groups of similar customers. This also works with the Customer Pareto in Advanced Planning functionality.
Creating a Customer Group
To create a customer group, go to:
- Data
- Data Maintenance
- Select "Customer" from the drop down
Select Customers to Assign to a Group
- Select the specific customers you wish to add to a group by clicking the checkbox next to the customer name
- Click "Assign to Group"
Assign to an Existing Group or Create a new Group
- From the drop down, you can assign the selected customers to an existing group. In the example below, the only visible group is the ParetoGroup that is part of the Customer Pareto in Advanced Planning functionality.
- Otherwise, you can create a new group by clicking "Create Group" in the pop-up.
Creating a Group
Clicking on "Create Group" opens the Create Group dialogue where you can enter a new group name.
Click OK to save.
The new Group name is visible in the list and customers assigned
Once the group is created, the Customers are assigned to the new group and these customers are disabled since they are now part of a new "Customer" that will used in Advanced Planning and Requirement Planning.
- The Group automatically collects the revenue of the customers included in the group.
- If a group that is created is not in use, you may delete it by clicking on the delete icon as shown below.
Upload Customer Orders
After assigning or removing the customer group, the next time the customer orders file is uploaded, all the sales orders for the customers are either applied against the new group or removed from the previously applied group.
If you run a new forecast prior to re-uploading customer orders, the customers assigned to the group will no longer be visible as shown below.
Once the customer orders are uploaded and a new forecast run, the customer group will become visible as shown below.
Run Classification Analysis
The Classification Analysis found under analytics needs to be run in order to update the cost and margin values of the customer group.
This is the result after running the analysis.
Removing a Customer from Customer Group
There are two methods to remove a customer from a group.
Method 1
As done above, select the customer to remove, click the "Assign to Group" button.
In the pop-up, select "None" from the drop down and then click "OK." Doing so will remove the customer(s) from their assigned group and restore them to their own entity.
Method 2
This method removes multiple customers from their assigned group.
To do so, select the customers that will remain in a group. In the example below, I have selected Fairfax and Greensburg to remain in the group with the intention to remove Dearborn Truck and Chattanooga from their assigned group.
Click "Assign to Group" to open the pop-up. Select the currently assigned group from the drop down and select the check box "Remove others from group." Click "OK" to apply the change.
The customers that were not selected are now removed from their previously assigned group.
Option: Upload the grouping as a file
Create a tab delimited text file named 'customergrouping.txt' with the following columns:
- Column 1 - Customer code
- Column 2 - Customer group name
For groups already created from the user interface, if there is at least one occurrence in the file, it deletes all previously linked members and the inserts those from the file. If there's no occurrence in the file - nothing is changed.
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