SAS® Forecast Server Features

Easy-to-use GUI

  • Set up the hierarchy, parameters and business rules through an interactive graphical interface for large-scale enterprise forecasting.
  • Generate automatic forecasts in batch or interactively using the New Project wizard.
  • Reconcile up and down the hierarchy, preserving locked forecast values for bottom-up, top-down or middle-out forecasting.
  • Build and reconcile forecasts created in different time intervals.
  • Identify exceptions automatically and generate exception reports based on sound statistical logic and business rules.
  • Overrule models using manual override to statistically forecast values, with the ability to lock the overrides.
  • Publish results automatically via hard copy, company portal or internet.
  • Perform scenario analysis. Test what-if scenarios, such as changes to pricing or promotions, and determine their likely effect on future demand using the Scenario Analyzer.

Scalability & modeling

  • Choose the level of automation for the forecasting process.
  • Rediagnose and identify candidate models, reestimate existing model parameters or generate forecasts using existing models and parameters.
  • Facilitates more effective statistically based forecasting methods that can be used throughout the entire organization.
  • Create more appropriate forecasting models for a wide range of behaviors using an extensible model repository that includes intermittent demand models, unobserved components models, ARIMAX models, dynamic regression, exponential smoothing models with optimized parameters and user-defined models.
  • Create ensemble models by combining two or more other models, often leading to more accurate forecasts.
  • Client/server architecture makes SAS Forecast Server suitable for large-scale enterprise forecasting problems.
  • Enhanced performance through multithreading of the diagnostic and forecasting engines.
  • SAS grid workspace servers support load balancing of multiple projects.

Easy manageability

  • Access the superior forecasting capabilities of SAS through SAS Forecast Studio, the user-friendly interactive graphical interface. No programming is required. Users can just point-and-click their way to powerful forecasting capabilities.
  • Incorporate forecasting as an ongoing and repeated process that fits into your organization's planning workflow.
  • Customize several aspects of the large-scale forecasting process with control over model selection, event identification and exception reporting.
  • Create and manage events definitions with a specialized events management console.
  • Incorporate individual judgment or outside information using the manual override console that includes override locking.
  • Improve the forecasting process using automatic regressor and events selection.
  • Adjust forecasts for outliers with automatic outlier detection.
  • Generate code for batch processing using the code generation GUI.
  • Reconcile forecasts generated for different time intervals (e.g., hourly, daily, weekly, yearly) to take advantage of the seasonality unique to each time interval (temporal reconciliation).
  • Use Forecast Project Manager for basic operations.

SAS® Time Series Studio GUI for interactive time series exploration & analysis

  • Identify data problems, such as outlier detection and management, missing values and date ID issues.
  • Allows for time series characterization, segmentation of the data into subsets and structural manipulation of the collective time series (hierarchy exploration).