Managing demand is critical to both efficacy and viability for any organization with ongoing heavy workloads or large consituencies. But "demand management" is routinely used to label the wrong thing. Seen properly as something that exists whether we respond to it or not, demand has its own life and impact. This general discussion surveys the distinction of demand and what to do with it.

1. How To Make A
Demand Management
Framework
An archestra notebook.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra

2. The Who Cares Test
What looks like demand today is dizzying in its variety and impermanence. At the
same time, it often seems that levels of demand rise and peak at extraordinary
heights and velocity, with little solid predictability of where it comes from.
Those impressions may simply be the most dramatic occasions, with the majority of
real demand being far less exciting for providers who intend to “meet demand”.
But if it is fair to assume that demand does continually change to a degree that is of
significant concern to a provider, then we have the following: the provider wants a
way to bring some consistency to the results of continually shooting at the moving
targets.
This would require getting the targets to move in ways that the provider prefers
and anticipates. That is, given types of targets would appear where and when the
provider preferred.

3. Framing Demand
In this context, the default notion of management includes all of the functional basics
including allocating, directing, tracking and evaluating.
Ordinarily, success in coordinating these efforts involves some process. The process makes
it feasible that attention to demand will be continuous and thorough.
But if a process is in place, then what is the purpose of a framework?
A fairly prominent purpose of a framework intersects processes: a framework provides
structure to a knowledge-based evaluation.
But the major intent of a demand management framework is to assure that demand itself,
rather than the management process, is what will be evaluated.
The framework has most of the responsibility for determining what kind of demand
becomes the input for the management process.
The management process then needs to be adaptable enough to deal with that demand
that has already attained designated types or levels of importance as input.

4. Spotting the Target
“Demand” is the universe of requests.
• Requests are what occurs when a need has been articulated – by identifying its
associations with instances of abilities, items, or states not yet obtained.
• The most overlooked aspect of a request is its defined focus on given instances.
For example, a request exists because, for some reason, a future amount of
something is requested, regardless of whether the requester already has any of it
or not.
• Therefore, the nature of a request, by definition, is to address an occurrence in a
future point in time.

5. The Importance of Good Aim
For a given organization, the importance of managed demand begins with
relevance: the universe of requests that are relevant to the type of fulfillment the
organization can provide.
However, the ability to fulfill is not necessarily a preference to fulfill.
Therefore, established preferences in fulfillment mean that a scope is part of the
essential definition of "managed" demand.
Relevant demand
At-large demand
Preferred demand

6. Hunting in the Right Places
At any given time, the totality of at-large demand will exceed the portion of
demand that is recognizable in requests.
Yet demand is constantly being converted into requests. The conversions mean that
given types of demand may go through variations of volume and location.
Meanwhile, volume and location are, both individually and as a pair, subject to
being sorted out into preferred and non-preferred occasions.
The generic tag for the volume and location pair is "source". Often the source is
thought of synonymously as the "origin"; but this similarity should be avoided
because the origin of demand is far more interesting and can be profiled separately.

7. The Origin of Demand
The origin of demand is need, but need also has multiple dimensions.
At its core, a need is a decision that some future state “should” materialize because
otherwise there will be a loss of either an opportunity or a continuity.
We know this is a sufficient high-level specification of need, because if a party has
no interest in either an opportunity or in further maintaining some current state,
there is usually no expression of any need that presents a perceived risk if it
ignored.
It can be the case that a party lacking a sense of need is actually at risk… but for
this discussion the matter at hand is to distinguish the cases of expressed need that
become significant demand for the provider.

8. Cultivating Demand
When there is a desired future state, the path to the future state depends on time
allowing for additional opportunity or additional continuity; then inhibitors to what
can happen in that allowance increase the party's being at risk, whereas drivers of
what can happen in that allowance decrease being at risk.
The question here is whether the likelihood of inhibitors or drivers occurring can be
seen. If the likelihood is apparent, then one of the key efforts to manage demand is
to affect the risk that creates the demand.
At this point, the analogy of hunting demand still makes sense but it becomes
inadequate to inform the success of management; instead, producing demand
makes more sense.

9. Classifying Demand: Risks
Acknowledging risk as a factor that creates demand, an important consideration to
include is the difference between negative risks and positive risks.
The term "Risk" most often connotes something negative, but what does it mean to
say "positive risk"? In this current discussion, risk involves a trade-off for the party
at risk.
• In positive risk, the probability is that the trade-off will put the party in a position
to end up with more satisfaction eventually, but first the party has to give up
something in order to be in a position to get something else. For example, making
a loan that is likely to be repaid with interest is a positive risk.
• A negative risk comes without a probability that the trade-off has a positive
eventual outcome. For example, making a loan that is unlikely to be paid back is a
negative risk.
It is also true that risks come with varying strengths of positivity or negativity, and
those relative strengths further differentiate types of demand.

10. Classifying Demand: Motivations
In the very beginning, however, what is it that makes people desire to have
something other than they already have? Or said differently, what is the motivation
of the requester?
• One example of how this question has been tackled is Maslow's Hierarchy.
Maslow theorized generic types of human needs, arranged bottom-up by
importance, including physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization
needs. In his theory, people are motivated to satisfy their needs at their current
level and also aspire to higher levels.
• Another example is based on the idea that people have an imagination about
their identity and they intend to become what they imagine or, once having done
that, to remain what they imagine.

11. The Seeds of Demand
Motivation will be the companion to Risk in causing need to be expressed as
demand.
Additionally, that party’s motivation
may be evaluated for the feasibility of
its ambition, and this can characterize
what expectations are reasonable and
important to address as demand.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
A big characteristic of demand is the
needy party’s perception of whether
the current risk involved is positive or
negative.

12. Compatible Demand
The combination of influences exerted by the provider is a way to direct demand
shaped to the fulfiller's advantage.
All requests are prioritized according to
the fulfiller’s confidence and the
provider’s plan for being the requester’s
selected agent of fulfillment
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
But, to utilize the influence, the provider
considers its own capabilities and
assurances about where and how it can
show up with fulfillments that will meet
the expectations the provider has both
gained and formed.

13. Management Strategy
Need originates Demand. Demand then is expressed as Requests. In effect, requests give actionable
shape to need, and the provider wants to concentrate on addressing the requests that are most
compatible with the fulfiller. The provider can strategically affect the demand.
For example: when requests are being addressed, providing information about possible fulfillments
influences the requester’s perception of the risk, which influences the acceptance of the provider’s
offering. In the same way, a provider also has an option to attempt to influence the motivation of
the requester.
Extending that approach, providers can themselves propose requests as a way to exert influence in
the fulfiller’s preferred direction.
In effect: the demand management effort being made here is to design the demand. Further, it is to
influence the associations that can be made between the need and the given types of fulfillments
that a provider can offer against requests. Ultimately, well-matched demand is forwarded with trust
to appropriate fulfillers.
Operationally, a variety of defined roles can take on differing responsibilities and assignments for
influencing, by preconditioning, the eventual response to designated kinds of things.

14. The Demand landscape from Origin to Request
Inhibitors
Location
Drivers
RISK
NEED
ORIGIN
SOURCE
(future states)
MOTIVATION
Position
Volume
Identity
DEMAND
(response targets)
DEMAND
REQUEST
SCOPE
Relevance
Preference
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra

15. Producing the Desired Demand
• Investigate
• Predict
• Expect
Management functions such as allocating,
directing, tracking and evaluating are
mainly about how managers influence
operations. But that vocabulary helps to
point out that often what passes for
“demand management” is itself actually
about Response-to-Demand operations.
Intelligence
is a success
factor
• Shape
• Classify
• Select
DEVELOP
demand
Agility
is a success
factor
In the current environment of continually
morphing markets and competitive options,
a more essential matter is to proactively
tackle prospective demand by collaborating
in its formation and circulation.
• Distribute
DELIVER
demand
Speed
is a success
factor
Managing demand is done to wind up with
the demand that is most helpful to the
provider and fulfiller.
© 2013 Malcolm Ryder / archestra
DESIGN
demand