SmartForecasts contains a wide variety of demand forecasting, demand planning and inventory optimization features. Here’s a brief description of the key features and advanced capabilities that have proven to be very important to the success of our customers:

Superior forecast accuracy and power

• SmartForecasts’ Automatic Statistical Forecasting provides fast, accurate forecasts of sales, product demand, safety stock, inventory levels and more.
• Interactive Managerial Adjustments let you refine forecast results on-screen, based on your domain knowledge and business judgment.
• Seasonality and trends in your data are handled automatically and reflected in forecast results.
• Multilevel (Multiseries) Forecasting allows top-down and bottom-up forecasts of entire product groups.
• Cause-and-Effect Models (Multivariate Regression) make it simple to answer questions such as, “What effect will a price cut have on our sales?”
• Automatic Trend Hedging™ builds increased accuracy and reality into your forecasts of new and aging products.
• Data analysis tools, such as timeplots, scatterplots, seasonal adjustment and more, support SmartForecasts’ many forecasting capabilities.

Promotion planning and management

• SmartForecasts’ special event models automatically forecast future promotion-driven sales.
• You can even create unique promotional scenarios for each SKU in your database, permitting item-specific promotion management.

Inventory optimization

• SmartForecasts Enterprise accurately estimates optimal safety stock and inventory requirements for all product items at any customer service level and lead time.
• It lets you balance your inventories so that the right products are in the right place at the right time, reducing inventory costs and improving customer service.

Collaborative forecasting and planning

• SmartForecasts Enterprise facilitates sales and operations planning and is fully compatible with SmartCollaborator, Smart Software’s web-based, collaborative forecasting and feedback system.
• Using the collaborative forecasting options, you can save and review multiple forecasting scenarios for any group of items and help develop a consensus forecast.
• With the “Send To” E-mail feature, you can instantly send your results to other forecasting collaborators.

Intermittent demand planning and forecasting *

• SmartForecasts Enterprise makes forecasting and inventory planning easy for products with intermittent, or “slow moving”, demand.
• With nearly 100% accuracy, SmartForecasts’ patented solution has been proven to be the most accurate available today. Perfect for companies managing service parts inventories, capital goods products, and other hard-to-forecast items.

Database integration and connectivity

• Universal database connectivity permits SmartForecasts to integrate directly with major ERP and SCM systems and host databases, such as Oracle, SQL Server and IBM DB2, and PC databases like MS Access.
• SmartForecasts’ database integration “wizards” support both ODBC and faster native connectivity links.

Multidimensional data management

• Excel-like, configurable data tables allow easy display, creation and management of multidimensional product data.
• With SmartForecasts’ OLAP Data Filtering, you can focus in and “slice and dice” your data by SKU, region, customer and other relevant dimensions.
• You can transfer data directly from a relational database; quickly import/ export data stored in Excel and ASCII files; and send forecast results automatically to drive your planning systems.

Embedded parameter and conversion capabilities

• SmartForecasts Enterprise’s embedded parameter capability further automates the forecasting process by letting you pre-specify Forecast and Selection parameter values (such as varying lead times and service levels) for thousands of individual items, reducing tasks previously taking hours to complete, to just a few minutes and also ensuring analytical consistency from one forecasting session to the next.
• With SmartForecasts Enterprise’s conversion capabilities, you can switch dynamically between forecasts in units and dollars, or any other defined set of measures, significantly enhancing planning flexibility in the S&OP process.

Management reporting

• SmartForecasts Enterprise provides useful management reports including a versatile Forecasts vs Actuals reporting module to track the accuracy of your forecasting process.
• A fully integrated comments facility lets you add notes and document changes for any forecasted item.
• Exception reports let you identify your most volatile items and pinpoint possible outlier events.

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