Why Omnichannel Demand Planning Keeps Blowing Up Your Forecasts

The Forecast That Looks Smart Until Reality Shows Up

On paper, your demand plan probably looks very civilized. There are rows, columns, and maybe even tasteful color coding. You line up last year's sales, sprinkle on some growth assumptions, factor in a promo or two, and call it a day. Then the real world shows up. TikTok wakes up one of your SKUs at 2 a.m., Target drops three surprise POs, Amazon doubles weekly velocity, and your D2C store politely keeps selling through all of it. Suddenly your beautiful forecast looks less like a plan and more like fiction.

This is the heart of omnichannel demand planning. You are not just guessing how much to buy. You are guessing how much to buy and where it needs to sit, which channels will eat first, and how fast everyone will change their minds. In the last couple of years, brands selling across four or more channels have seen much bigger week to week swings than their single channel cousins. The math did not get harder. The behavior did.

The uncomfortable truth is that your spreadsheets are not broken. They are just trying to describe a world that refuses to sit still. If your planning tools are built for yesterday's single channel life, they will keep betraying you in today's omnichannel mess.

How Channels Quietly Sabotage Each Other

Demand planning used to be about one question: how many units will sell next month. In omnichannel, that question multiplies into smaller, sharper versions of itself. None of your channels behave politely. Amazon accelerates suddenly, retail orders behave like surprise pop quizzes, and your own site runs promotions that rewrites demand curves overnight.

Where Traditional Planning Tools Give Up

Most planning tools were built for a world with slower, single channel demand. They rely on delayed data, fragmented systems, and outdated logic. By the time your plan sees a spike, the spike is gone and so is the stock.

How G10 Builds Planning On One Version Of Reality

G10 starts with inventory truth. ChannelPoint, the proprietary WMS, tracks every unit by scan so nothing is approximate. As Bryan Wright, CTO and COO, puts it: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it. At any moment I know where the product sits, how it moved, and what it is connected to."

Planning Across A Distributed Warehouse Network

G10 operates facilities in Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada, all on the same WMS. As Holly Woods, Director of Operations, explains: "Having strategically placed warehouses lets inbounds come in faster, which means we can get it distributed faster."

People Who Actually Read The Numbers

G10 provides direct human oversight. As Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, says: "Every account at G10 has a direct point of contact. You only have to reach out to one person."

Demand Planning For Brands That Expect Growth

G10 was built for brands that scale. Founder and CEO Mark Becker shaped the company for complexity, not convenience.

When your brand is ready for demand planning that survives omnichannel chaos, G10 can turn your forecasts into something that actually works.