Stock forecasting
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Stock Forecasting
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As a distributor, you know only too well the challenges that
stock forecasting can bring. Without accurate information, it's a
juggling act that gets in the way of making the right decisions.
Our Stock Forecasting module gives you the visibility you need to
identify fast and slow movers, high value items and long lead time
units so that you can establish optimum stock levels for every
line. Flexible and easy to use, Stock Forecasting will ultimately
give you the information you need to meet orders, plan for
opportunities and improve cash flow.
At-a-glance information
Stock Forecasting consolidates inputs from across your business
(e.g. purchase orders, sales orders and purchase requests) and
displays this information in a visual forecast. By calculating this
information from live data held in your Access solution, you can be
sure you're the information you're looking at is both timely and
accurate.
The colours on the grid represent where stock quantities fall
within your pre-defined parameters, showing your entire stock
status at-a-glance. You can also filter the grid to highlight those
items that are out-of-stock, making it very easy to action problem
areas. The actual colours you use are up to you, but for ease of
use, the default settings are based on a traffic light system:
- Green: minimum stock exceeded (optimal level)
- Amber: nearly out of stock
- Red: out of stock
- Blue: maxium stock exceeded
Forecast periods
You can forecast by day, week, month or quarter, up to 26
periods ahead. For simplicity, the default date is set to 'today',
but you can easily change the start date to roll your forecasting
periods forward and back.
Reviewing stock
Intuitive drag and drop tools make it easy to see forecasts in
many different ways; for example, you could group by column to view
stock by supplier, colour or brand, or all stock from a particular
country. You could also view all items by colour e.g. those selling
fast, or those running low.
The ease by which you can 'slice and dice' your information give
you far greater visibility and early warning of issues before they
pose a threat to your sales activity or cashflow.
Purchasing forecasts
Having run some forecasts, you'll soon see low/out of stock
items start to appear on the grid. It's time to do some
purchasing!
All you have to do is type quantities in the grid until the free
stock indicates green or amber. With seasonal stock you may aim to
'go amber' towards the end of the season and may even accept red at
the close if it's more profitable to sacrifice a small number of
orders in favour of keeping out-of-date stock.
Once you're happy with the forecast, simply click the required
cell (or cells) to create single (or multiple) purchase requests.
The forecasting screen is refreshed to show you a request has been
made and the corresponding requests generated in your Access system
where they can be consolidated.
Importing purchase order forecasts
Purchase orders created in Excel can also be imported into your
forecast, allowing you to upload large volumes of data without
re-keying.
Sales predictions
When it comes to sales forecasts, you have several flexible
options.
You can enter sales forecasts manually, inputting the number of
new customer orders you expect to receive, week by week, taking
account of the season, promotional events, sales force predictions
and any other factors. You can also choose to use the forecast
detail - simply double-click a line and enter the forecasts.
If you're building forecasts by customer and want to see the
overall impact, you can import from Excel, which is useful when
you're using spreadsheets.
For more sophisticated forecasts, we provide several wizards to
guide you through the process of generating and scheduling:
Generating sales forecasts
This wizard allows you to create named forecasts (by customer,
for example) and for you to set a range of values such as: date
range to use for the historic data capture, the start date for the
forecast and whether you want to apply a 'moving average'. This
option averages the sales for the last 'n' months and creates a
single forecast for each part. Sales force information about buying
trends for example can be factored in using the % growth/decline
option.
Finally, you can also choose to include another product's
profile, making it easy to factor in the historic sales performance
of similar items. Each one of these forecasts can be saved,
retrieved and edited each time you run them, refreshed with the
very latest information.
Schedule forecasts
This option enables you to set a specific quantity for the
selected stock item, either in total or by forecast. For total
forecasts, you set the amount you want to forecast and choose the
frequency e.g. forecast 50 over 10 weeks = 10 forecasts of 5. When
using the 'per forecast' option, you set the amount and how long it
will last for.
Global change
This function will save you significant time and effort when you
want to roll entire forecasts forward and back. A wizard will guide
you through the process of making bulk changes to forecast records,
utilising sort keys so that you can filter records by any
combination of date, stock and/or MRP code.
Export to Excel
All forecasts can be exported to Excel, allowing you to share
the very latest information with non-system users.
Simple & low-risk
Stock forecasting provides a constantly up-to-date and visual
roadmap, presenting top-level information in a manner that's quick
to review and easy to understand. It simultaneously de- skills
complex yet necessary buying decisions and eliminates reliance on
spreadsheet models - which go out of date as soon as a further
sales or purchase order is placed on the system.
Further information:
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