SAP Advance Planner and Organiser. (APO)

SAP APO enables organizations to create a very close match between supply and demand by integrating purchasing, manufacturing, distribution, and transportation into one consistent model. SAP APO also includes functionality to enable organizations to dynamically determine how and when inventory should be distributed. The system draws on the data universally available in liveCache to optimize deployment plans based on available algorithms, as well as user rules and policies. In the benchmark, we use mass processing, which allows you to run the heuristic planning for large numbers of product-location combinations, with mass processing jobs running concurrently in the background. SAP APO is the application component of SAP SCM 4.0 and
mySAP SCM that helps you solve the seeming dilemma of improving customer service while lowering costs, yet increasing profits at the same time.
APO is an entire suite of supply chain planner applications that increase overall knowledge of the supply chain and provide forecasting, planning and optimization. There are eight application levels within SAP APO: network design, supply network planning, demand planning, production planning and detailed scheduling, transportation planning and vehicle scheduling, global availability and supply chain collaboration. The SAP APO is not a standalone application and requires a backend ERP system such as SAP R/3 for the execution. SAP R/3 communicate with SAP APO using the the APO Core Interface (CIF) which supplies SAP APO with the master and the transaction data in the real time. Interaction between the SAP R/3 at backend and the SAP APO is in real time and any data related to the production, the sales or the supplies is immediately transferred from one system to another without requiring any batch processing.

Alternative to APO in Oracle is Demantra
So how does APO differ from Demantra an Oracle product? To my understanding it is not able to fully perform PTPM (Predictive Trade Planning Management) capabilities? How does APO complete pre/post analysis of trade spend? Demantra is NetWeaver certified and able to run on an ERP backbone of SAP. Meaning it can be fully integrated. There are many customers currently doing this at Oracle from what I understand. What would you say to this option?
Apart from the different in PTPM, Demantra has a inbuilt Multi Lag Forecast accuracy analysis report also called Waterfall Model of analysis. This has to be built from scratch in SAP using BI. This is a best practice report and having it readily available is an advantage with Demantra
Materials in R/3 are known as Products in APO.
Allocations in APO are a way of controlling the stock levels permitted to be confirmed to a specific transactional requirement in R/3; e.g. a sales order
E.g. If an allocation is set up (via the APO planning book) to restrict the quantity of a product for a specific customer to a quantity of 10, when the actual unrestricted stock (ATP quantity) is 100, the second step of the ATP (Available To Promise) check will only allow that customer for this specific material to confirm a maximum of 10.
Key features:
· Allocations can be set up at different levels of an organization's structure through characteristic combinations
Allocations can be controlled periodically
· Allocations can be proportionate
· Allocations can be amended manually to satisfy the business's requirements during economic climate change or due to seasonal factors
· Allocations do not have a direct link to stock in R/3