Over 50% of builders merchants and manufacturing companies are now using or considering using the On Demand model to improve supply chain performance.

By 2011, 25%* of the building sector will be trading on demand says Wesupply.. Continued pressures to reduce costs, improve performance and compete globally have ushered in On Demand Software as a Service (SaaS) supply chain management solutions. Over the last year these web-based supply chain solutions have seen an exponential growth of 125%.

Over 50% of builders merchants and manufacturing companies are now using or considering using the On Demand model to improve supply chain performance.

For many years the On Demand model has taken a back seat - yet now the 'quiet revolution' is turning into a stampede as more building companies plug in and switch over to On Demand - by 2011 some 25% of the sector will be trading that way.

The 'plug and go' stampede is already revolutionising the way many merchants and their suppliers are doing business.

The top issues facing the Building retail sector for both customers and suppliers are:.

Load Management.

Delivering the perfect order, on time and in full Vendor Managed Inventory.

Process Compliance.

Improved electronic trading with full visibility between trading partners.

Meeting customer electronic trading mandates.

Trading partner performance and relationship.

Collaborative forecasting.

Wesupply's On Demand supply chain management applications confront these requirements with perfectly dove-tailed solutions.

What is most exciting about the advent of On Demand for the building industry are the opportunities it creates for the future in terms of collaboration and issues such as Load Management.

With the pressure on supply chains to be more and more efficient there is an ever increasing need for businesses to communicate trading information that dovetails with their existing IT infrastructure, leveraging the existing investment in IT - this is where On Demand comes into its own - the ability to link into the established infrastructure without costly new hardware or software.

On Demand Collaborative Trading.

No.1 Load Management .

With ever-rising fuel costs the necessity of ensuring full truck loads grows more and more important.

The key lies in manipulating the quantities of each SKU to balance the requirements of a full load with the theoretical optimum stock level, ensuring that high-value/fast moving items are prioritised above low value/slow moving items.

Wesupply can provide sophisticated solutions which can be used with their own Inventory Planning solutions or as an extension to an existing planning system.

What it does.

Put simply, Load Planning takes an SKU- level replenishment plan and refines it to minimise the number of deliveries required and ensure that each delivery is a full load.

Load Planning can be run over a medium-term horizon to determine how many deliveries are actually required, so transport and delivery slots can be arranged.

The process can then be run on a short-term cycle to refine each load at the time it is released for picking and/or packing.

The benefits.

Improved visibility of future deliveries means earlier bookings of transport, possibly at preferential rates, and reduction in emergency freight costs.

Earlier allocation of delivery slots at an RDC or final delivery point means you can deliver when it suits your schedule.

Increasing the percentage of full loads obviously means reduced transport costs and increased profitability.