SAS® Demand-Driven Forecasting
Maximize profitability, market share and customer satisfaction
Benefits
- Improve forecasting accuracy across your product hierarchy.
- Reduce finished goods inventory and stock-outs.
- Enhance accuracy with forecast-value-added (FVA) and reporting.
Features
- Automated statistical model selection and optimization.
- Model repository with predefined models.
- Event modeling console.
- "What-if" analysis and scenario planning.
- Consensus forecasting workbench.
- Monitoring, tracking and reporting.
- New product forecasting workbench.
" "With SAS, we're better able to accomplish our goal of right flavor, right time, right store.""
—Geoff Fisher
Director of Demand and Supply Planning
Nestlé
How SAS® Is Different
- SAS® Demand Driven Forecasting is part of the SAS Demand Driven Planning and Optimization Suite. SAS Demand Driven Planning and Optimization is a modular suite of products designed to improve demand and inventory management processes utilizing advanced analytics, data integration, alerting, workflow, dashboards and reports. Common foundational components and interfaces (SAS Demand Driven Planning and Optimization Foundation), combined with optional modules (Forecast Analyst Workbench, Inventory Optimization Workbench, Consensus Forecasting, New Product Forecasting and Forecasting for SAP/APO) allow customers to address immediate business challenges and add future capabilities while protecting their current investments.
- Automatically generates business/product hierarchy with assessment at every level for the appropriate statistical model and forecasts.
- Predicts incremental (lifts) sales volume associated with sales promotions, marketing events and other irregular activities that affect sales demand.
- Provides automated, statistically driven, weighted consensus forecasting with gap analysis monitoring and reporting with alerts.
- Disseminates forecast performance metrics and tracking reports across the enterprise.
Benefits
- Improve forecasting accuracy across your product hierarchy. SAS' patented statistical forecasting engine has a complete array of advanced forecasting methods to model and forecast your organization's entire product portfolio.
- Reduce finished goods inventory and stock-outs. SAS provides forecasts that reflect the realities of your business, improving your planning accuracy. With plans that ensure the right products at the right time at the right locations, you can both prevent stock-outs and minimize finished goods inventory – increasing customer satisfaction while reducing costs.
- Enhance accuracy with forecast-value-added (FVA) and reporting. The solution automatically generates FVA reports that indicate the differences between the statistical baseline forecast and all individual departmental forecasts with notes indicating reasons. These reports can be reviewed, changed and written back to the data model.
Features
- Automated statistical model selection and optimization.
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- Analyzes and combines various models to produce a forecast that best depicts your organization at every level of the corporate and product hierarchy.
- Provides hierarchical forecasting for hundreds of thousands of data series.
- Synchronizes and allocates forecasts from any level within the hierarchy.
- Model repository with predefined models.
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- Includes time series methods such as:
- Single exponential smoothing.
- Holt's/Brown's two parameter exponential smoothing.
- Winter's three parameter exponential smoothing.
- Additive/multiplicative
- ARIMA.
- Includes causal methods such as:
- ARIMAX (ARIMA with intervention and causal variables).
- Lagged variables/transfer functions.
- Dynamic multiple regression.
- UCM (Unobserved Components Model).
- Lets you add your own custom models.
- Event modeling console.
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- Interactive JAVA GUI.
- Incorporates predefined holiday events (Christmas, Easter, etc.) and automatic date realignment for moving holidays.
- Provides four event types: pulse, ramp up/down, level shift and temporary.
- "What-if" analysis and scenario planning.
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- Plug-in to the SAS Demand-Driven Forecasting applications dashboard.
- Provides "what-if" planning capabilities using model parameter estimates.
- Lets you change model parameter estimates to determine effects on forecasts.
- Consensus forecasting workbench.
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- Interactive consensus forecasting workbench (workflow) with GUI.
- "What-if" planning capabilities using model parameter estimates – ability to change model parameter estimates to determine effects on forecasts.
- Analysts can perform "what-if" analysis to shape future demand.
- Analysis output can be pushed into the consensus forecasting workbench as overrides.
- Monitoring, tracking and reporting.
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- Supply Chain Intelligence Center Dashboard with KPIs/metrics.
- Series of interactive forecast performance monitoring and tracking reports.
- Series of alerts (graphical/tabulator) to monitor exceptions.
- New product forecasting workbench.
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- Patent-pending structured judgment methodology.
- Integrates statistical analysis with business judgment in five steps.
- Suggests future demand of new products based on "act-like" or surrogate products.
- Considers seasonality, level and trend of surrogate products.
- Allows users to shape the suggested demand based on their business knowledge.
- Patent-pending structured judgment methodology.
Screenshots
Forecast Analyst Workbench
The Forecast Analyst Workbench enables forecast analysts to combine the power of statistical forecasting and domain knowledge to sense demand signals and shape future demand based on sales and marketing activities as well as other internal and external factors impacting demand delivering more accurate statistical forecasts.
Consensus Planning Workbench
The Consensus Forecasting Workbench allows you to import and consolidate internal and external customer forecasts (sales, marketing, finance and others) using real collaborative workflow in an iterative process to easily communicate assumptions and rationale to finalize a more accurate consensus plan.
New Product Forecasting Workbench
The SAS New Product Forecasting process builds a forecast using the historical data of groups of existing products with similar characteristics and attributes using a patent-pending structured judgment methodology that helps automate the selection of analogous products ("like items"), facilitates review and clustering of past new product introductions, and generates statistical new product forecasts.
SAS® Supply Chain Intelligence Center
The SAS® Supply Chain Intelligence Center provides executives and managers with a single comprehensive view of their company's Supply Chain operations. It leverages best-practice KPIs and metrics to surface performance information and give users the information they need through a set of common dashboards and scorecards as well as dynamic performance reports. The SAS® Supply Chain Intelligence Center is included in all of the SAS® Supply Chain Intelligence solutions to provide the functionality of SAS® Business Analytics with industry specific data models.
System Requirements
Client environment
- Windows (x86-32): Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Professional
- Internet Explorer 6 and later
- Microsoft Office 2000 or later (for SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office)
- Microsoft .NET framework 1.1 (for SAS Add-In for Microsoft Office)
Additional software
- JRE: 1.4.2_09 (Sun)
- MySQL Pro 5.0.22
- MySQL Connector/J 5.0.3, commercial version
Server environment
SAS servers, including Base SAS and SAS Metadata Server, can be installed on one or more hardware systems in a multitier configuration.Operating systems
- AIX 6.1
- Windows (x86-32): Windows NT 4 Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003
- Solaris SPARC Version 10
Additional software
- Oracle WebLogic 8.1 Service Pack 3
- MySQL 5.0.22
Midtier environment
Additional requirements:
- SAS client and midtier require JRE 1.4.2_09
- Oracle WebLogic 8.1 Service Pack 3
Optional software:
- WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment Version 5.1.1.5
Ready to learn more?
Call us at 1-800-727-0025 (US and Canada) or request more information.
