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Demand drivers

Demand drivers are time series — marketing spend, events, promo calendars — that your organization tracks alongside sales. Driver-aware forecast models use the fitted relationship between a driver and demand, so changing a driver’s projected values changes the forecast. The drivers surface lets you maintain each series, import data by CSV, and preview What-If scenarios before committing them.
Demand drivers are feature-flagged and enabled per organization. If you don’t see Marketing & Promotions → Drivers in the sidebar, the feature is not switched on for your organization.

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Drivers list

Navigate to Marketing & Promotions → Drivers (/marketing-promotions/drivers). The list shows every driver with its name, kind, unit, and aggregation. Click a driver’s name to open its detail page. To add a driver, click New driver and fill in the create dialog: name, kind, unit, and aggregation.

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Driver detail page

Each driver’s detail page shows:
  • Header chips — the driver’s kind, unit, aggregation, and grain (daily is the canonical grain).
  • Series chart — a solid line for actual observed values, a dashed line for the editable projection, and a dashed vertical “today seam” separating them.
  • Points table — every point in the series. Projection rows are inline-editable, and a manual add-point row appends new projection points. Actual points are read-only — corrections come via re-upload.
The page’s actions are Import CSV (opens the upload wizard), What-if (opens the scenario drawer), and Configure model (links to Settings → Forecast Admin → Models, where a driver’s consuming models are configured).

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Importing driver data

Click Import CSV to open the upload wizard, which walks through four stages:
1

Upload

Select your CSV file for the driver.
2

Validation

Review summary cards — rows parsed, valid, warnings, errors — and the validation results.
3

Preview

Review the parsed points in a table alongside a series-shape chart and any remaining issues before anything is written.
4

Apply

Apply the valid points to the driver’s series. The footer shows how many valid points will be applied and when the upload session expires.
Uploads are how actual values enter and get corrected — the points table never edits actuals directly.

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What-If scenarios

The What-if drawer answers “what happens to demand if this driver changes?” without touching the committed forecast. It re-runs the assigned driver model on a perturbed value using the same fitted relationship the committed forecast uses — and nothing is saved until you commit.
1

Pick a projection point

Select a projected date from the driver’s series. The current value pre-fills so you edit from a known baseline. Only projection points can be perturbed — add one from the points table first if the driver has none.
2

Enter a perturbed value

Type the hypothetical value for that date.
3

Preview

Click Preview. The server computes the demand response and shows three totals — current demand, preview demand, and the unit delta — plus a “Biggest movers” table of the SKU-channel pairings that respond most.
4

Apply or discard

Click Apply to commit: the perturbed values are persisted as manual projection points, and the next forecast run picks them up. Reset clears the scenario, and closing the drawer discards it with zero side effects.

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Best practices

Driver models are only as good as the series behind them. Import actuals regularly so the fitted relationship reflects recent reality, and re-upload to correct bad actuals.
Use the What-If preview to sanity-check the demand response before applying. A surprising delta usually means the perturbation is outside the range the model was fitted on — or the series has data issues.
The movers table shows which SKU-channel pairings carry the response. If the wrong products move, review which models consume the driver via Configure model.
Pick the driver’s unit and aggregation to match how the source data is reported — mixing units across uploads makes the series, and the fitted relationship, meaningless.

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Troubleshooting

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Drivers pages are not visible

Possible causes:
  • The Marketing & Promotions section is not enabled for your organization.
Solutions:
  1. Contact your Tether administrator about feature availability.

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What-If preview shows no response

Possible causes:
  • No driver-aware model is assigned to consume this driver.
  • The perturbed value equals the current value.
Solutions:
  1. Click Configure model to check the driver’s consuming models in Forecast Admin.
  2. Change the perturbed value and preview again.

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Cannot edit a point in the table

Possible causes:
  • The point is an actual — actuals are read-only.
Solutions:
  1. Correct actual values by re-uploading via Import CSV. Only projection points are editable inline.

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Next Steps

Promotions

Define promotional events and measure their lift

Forecast Admin

Manage the forecast models that consume drivers

Forecast Dashboard

See driver-informed forecasts by SKU and channel

Supply Planning

Turn forecasted demand into supply recommendations