DemandTec Connects Weather and Planning

I have followed the idea of connecting accurate weather forecasts to planning and forecasting for some time.  We watched as Wal-Mart did some early work  to include this form of intelligence to minimize out-of-stocks and demand inaccuracies due to weather conditions.  In the past forecasts were too poor to use this kind of planning augmentation, but improvements in weather modeling have advanced accuracy considerably.   Eliminating this form of noise in a forecast is a powerful idea.  I see now that DemandTec has integrated weather forecasting into their offerings:

" ... DemandTec, Inc. the collaborative optimization network for retailers and consumer products companies, today announced the availability of Weather Trends on DemandTec, a new network partner app providing highly accurate, long-term temperature and precipitation forecasts on a global basis for the DemandTec customer community ... "Our research shows that a shift of just one degree in temperature can drive vast changes in sales activity," said Jack Grum, Executive Vice President and Co-founder of Weather Trends International.  "We are excited that the DemandTec network community can now incorporate predictive weather intelligence into their merchandising and marketing decisions."  .... '

I plan to follow this development more closely and post about it further here.