SAS^® Forecast Server

Features

Easy-to-use GUI

Automatic enterprise forecasting: Set up the hierarchy, parameters and business rules through an interactive graphical interface.
New Project wizard: Generate automatic forecasts in batch or through the interactive graphical interface.
Hierarchical reconciliation: Reconcile up and down the hierarchy, leveraging the strength of SAS Analytics.
Fix exceptions automatically: Generate exception reports based on sound statistical logic and business rules.
User override facility: Overrule models by manual override to statistical forecast values; override locking facility.
Extensible reporting: Publish results automatically via hard copy, company portal or Internet.

Scalability

Choice of forecast automation level. Users can choose the level of automation for the forecasting process: Re-diagnose and identify candidate models, re-estimate existing model parameters or generate forecasts using existing models and parameters.
Facilitates ongoing and repeatable forecasting as part of a company’s overall planning process, surfacing more effective statistically based forecasting methods that can be operationalized throughout the forecasting process.
Extensible model selection list: intermittent demand models, unobserved components models, ARIMAX models, dynamic regression, Exponential Smoothing models with optimized parameters, plus user-defined models.
Client/server architecture.

Easy manageability

Access to the superior forecasting capabilities of SAS through SAS Forecast Studio, the user-friendly interactive graphical interface. No programming is required users just point and click their way to powerful forecasting capabilities.
Functionality to support forecasting as an ongoing and repeated process that fits into the organization’s planning workflow.
An easy means to customize several aspects of the large-scale forecasting process, including exception rules, the model repository and events, giving users more flexibility and control over model selection, event identification and exception reporting.
Events management console.
Manual overrides console, including override locking.
Automatic regressor and events selection.
Automatic outlier detection.
Code generation via GUI: code generation for batch processing.