Smart Software Ships SmartForecasts Version 8.2

New enhancements improve demand and inventory planning capabilities in tough economic times

Belmont, Mass., July 1, 2009 -- Smart Software, Inc., provider of industry-leading demand forecasting, planning, and inventory optimization solutions, today announced the release of Version 8.2 of its flagship product, SmartForecasts^®. This latest version boasts a number of new features and enhancements to meet the needs of demand and inventory planners in an increasingly complex planning environment. Notable among the enhancements are new ways to filter and manage data, quickly deliver accurate forecasts and inventory stocking estimates that help reduce costs and increase service levels, aggregate and classify results for improved financial and inventory planning, and handle an expanded variety of forecasting situations---including those made more difficult by current economic challenges, such as increased demand volatility, stocking shortages and surpluses, and uncertain cash flow.

The new release also extends Smart Software's patented intermittent demand forecasting capabilities, a unique solution for forecasting hard-to-forecast inventory items commonly found in companies with service parts organizations and capital goods manufacturers in a variety of industries. In addition, Version 8.2 introduces improvements to the SmartForecasts' user interface and navigation, including more ways to view forecast results in a variety of different reports and screen formats.

"We continue to provide exciting new enhancements to SmartForecasts that increase its value, especially in the current economic downturn when strong demand planning is critical in maintaining only as much inventory as necessary to satisfy customer needs," said Charles Smart, president and CEO of Smart Software. "Version 8.2 builds on a solid base of robust functionality that benefits a variety of businesses with reduced inventories, increased service levels, and improved cash flow, as well as a low total cost of ownership."

SmartForecasts is a cross-industry solution for demand forecasting, demand planning, and inventory optimization. It integrates easily with host databases, such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and IBM DB2, and virtually any ERP system including solutions from SAP, Microsoft, Sage and Epicor. Among the new capabilities in SmartForecasts 8.2 are:

• Enhancements to its large-scale automatic forecasting system. With SmartForecasts' new embedded parameter technology, planners can customize forecasting jobs for thousands of product items---down to the item level or up to the group level, rapidly producing accurate forecasts and safety stock estimates for every item.
• More powerful and easier-to-use multi-level forecasting, a feature that is especially useful in creating budgets and doing demand/inventory planning involving multiple hierarchies.
• Technical improvements in accuracy and performance to all statistical forecasting algorithms.
• A new FreeStyle method for forecasting new product items or items that require manual, non-statistical forecasting.
• A new look for Batch Automatic forecasting, including synchronized graphs, tables and reports, together with new tabbed displays of expected forecasts, as well as safety stock and inventory level results.
• Improvements to the spreadsheet-style data table, including new search, sort and data filtering functionality, color coding of information to let you know exactly what you are looking at, and flexible ways to track the status of the data and help you manage your view of the data table.
• New ways to combine forecast information to better match specific planning needs, including for example, the ability to incorporate time-phased price changes in the forecasting process to better estimate sales revenues and a method to merge long-range planned orders with statistical demand forecasts to optimize future estimates of total demand.
• Expanded functionality to let database administrators more easily integrate SmartForecasts with corporate databases and control user access to restricted and non-restricted data.
• Complete rewriting and redesign of the SmartForecasts product documentation.

SmartForecasts 8.2 is also fully compatible with SmartCollaborator, Smart Software's complementary application that provides web-based collaboration across the enterprise, utilizing feedback from remote users both inside and outside the corporation to foster consensus forecasting and better communications between planning groups.

SmartForecasts 8.2 is available directly from Smart Software and authorized resellers. It is also available as a customizable OEM solution for software developers interested in incorporating forecasting in their existing planning systems.

About Smart Software, Inc.
Founded in 1984, Smart Software, Inc. is a leader in providing businesses with enterprise-wide demand forecasting, planning and inventory optimization solutions. Smart Software's flagship product, SmartForecasts, has thousands of users worldwide, including customers at mid-market enterprises and Fortune 500 companies, such as Abbott Laboratories, Mitsubishi, Siemens, Disney, Pfizer, Nikon, GE and The Coca-Cola Company. SmartForecasts gives demand planners the tools to handle sales seasonality, promotions, new and aging products, multi-dimensional hierarchies, and intermittently demanded service parts and capital goods items. It also provides inventory managers with accurate estimates of the minimum inventory and safety stock required to meet future orders, thereby ensuring the most cost-effective inventory allocation to achieve desired service levels. Smart Software is headquartered in Belmont, Massachusetts and can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.smartcorp.com.

SmartForecasts is a registered trademark and SmartCollaborator and FreeStyle are trademarks of Smart Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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