Demand Determination
The following applies to time-dependent courses.
Use
The Demand Determination function is a decision support tool. It enables you to plan and schedule courses on the basis of the demand that exists for them.
Demand for a course is calculated using data that is already in the system. The system proposes a specific number of courses to be planned and scheduled based on this data, making your planning more efficient.
Integration
The Demand Determination function is coupled directly with the planning function in Training Management.
Prerequisites
Data regarding at least one of the following areas must be available for the course type you are planning:
· Prebookings
· Bookings from the previous year
· Demand in the previous year
· Course types flagged as mandatory
· Development plan
If none of the above data is available, you can define the demand yourself to enable you to use the planning function at all.
Features
· Demand determination based on existing data
You can determine demand for a course based on the prebookings received within a specified time period (or in the planning year if you specify no period), or on the bookings made the previous year. A third option is simply to base your planning on the demand figures from the previous year.
Other options for demand determination include:
¡ Calculate the demand based on course types flagged as mandatory.
¡ Calculate demand based on development plans.
· Change or modify the method of demand determination
You can modify the methods used to determine demand by:
...
a. Combining methods: If you select more than one of the methods, the resulting demand figures are added together.
b. Specifying a percentage by which the demand can be adjusted up or down.
c. For example, if you use the prebookings as the calculation basis but anticipate further prebookings in the near future, you can specify a percentage by which the resulting demand can be increased.
You want to find out the mean (average) of the three different methods.To do so, you select all three options. Since you do not want the results to be added, you enter 66.6- in the percentage plus or minus field.This will result in 33.3 percent of each of the three results being taken.
· Demand displayed beside course type
The demand determined is displayed beside the course type in the planning menu.
· User-defined demand
You can define demand yourself if a course type is new and there is no relevant data, such as the data listed below, on which to base demand figures:
¡ No previous year’s booking data
¡ No prebookings
¡ No previous year’s demand figures
¡ No mandatory courses
¡ No development plans
To define
demand yourself, you execute the demand determination function and select any
of the three options. When you choose
and the system is unable to determine demand
because there is no data on which to base it, the dialog box Create Demand appears. You can
create demand statistics there yourself by choosing New entries.
· Modify demand determined
You can modify the demand figures that the system calculates.
When you choose Plan or Change Demand, the Change Demand dialog box appears displaying the demand statistics on which the planning is being based.
You can change this as required by overwriting it. You can also add new demand by choosing New entries. You can then save your entries or transfer them by choosing the relevant function.
If you choose Transfer, the new values are taken for the current planning operation only.
If you
choose 
, your entries are
saved and recorded on the database.
See also: