Forecast Pro

What is Forecast Pro?

Forecast Pro is proven off-the-shelf software used by organizations around the globe for creating statistically-based accurate forecasts that can be readily integrated into broader planning systems. Designed specifically for business forecasters, Forecast Pro is easy-to-use yet provides state-of-the-art methods and comprehensive tools that have been more than 30 years in the making.

Easy, Accurate, Affordable

Starting at just $1,495, Forecast Pro is affordable, easy-to-use and quick to implement, so it’s not surprising that thousands of companies across a wide range of industries rely on the software for creating accurate demand forecasts.

But it doesn’t stop there ‒ Forecast Pro empowers your team by providing comprehensive features for building a successful forecast process including:
  • Tools for efficiently managing, monitoring, and improving forecast processes
  • Easy integration into larger planning systems
  • Built-in capability to support S&OP processes
  • Low IT overhead

The Best of Both Worlds

It’s easy for your organization to take advantage of all that Forecast Pro offers as the premier standalone forecasting solution without abandoning your existing ERP or other planning systems.

Forecast Pro can easily hook into any other systems or databases that your organization uses, freeing you from the burden of being stuck with a lackluster embedded forecasting module. With 12,000 organizations using Forecast Pro worldwide, our solution is used in conjunction with virtually every system under the sun!

Quick Tour

Watch the Quick Tour Video to see Forecast Pro's power and flexibility in action.

Capabilities

Create accurate and credible forecasts, and efficiently manage your forecast process.

Forecasting Methods

Create accurate forecasts quickly and easily using proven statistical forecasting methods.

Product Comparison

Three editions of Forecast Pro are available to satisfy a range of business forecasting needs.

Implementation

Follow these quick and easy steps to implement out off-the-shelf software package.

FORECAST PRO Customers

Learn more about our customers and how Forecast Pro has helped them to improve their forecasting.

Capabilities

Forecast Pro offers a comprehensive portfolio of tools for solving a wide range of forecasting challenges. Whether you are looking for just the basics or need advanced forecasting techniques and analytics, Forecast Pro has the right tools for you.

Automatic Statistical Forecasting

Forecast Pro’s automatic “best pick” algorithm allows you to generate accurate forecasts, even for thousands of items, in a matter of seconds and will account for seasonal patterns, trends, business cycles, promotional activity and more. If you prefer to specify the forecasting approach, Forecast Pro provides menu-based custom modeling options and a comprehensive set of diagnostic tools. Visit the Forecasting Methodologies page for a complete list of statistical methods implemented in the software.

Customized Hierarchies & Multiple Units of Measure

You can forecast at any level of granularity and easily view/report aggregate data and forecasts. Forecast Pro also supports hierarchy pivoting and the ability to work with forecasts in units, dollars, and other units of measure simultaneously, allowing different parts of your team and/or organization to view the forecasts how they want to see them.

Easy Forecast Adjustment & Collaboration

Forecast Pro makes it easy to collaborate with others to establish the final forecast. A robust, Excel-like grid control allows easy adjustment by percentage, increments, or by simply entering new values. Adjustments to the forecast can be made at any level in the hierarchy, and all changes are automatically reconciled. Handy comment fields make it easy to document changes, and override reports provide total transparency.

Sales and Operations Planning (S nbsp& OP)

In support of your organization’s S nbsp& OP process, you can import supplementary data into Forecast Pro ‒ such as other forecasts, current inventory, and open orders ‒ to build customized reports and graphs.

Forecast Accuracy Reporting

Forecast Pro maintains an archive of your previous forecasts (both statistically–generated and adjusted forecasts) so that you can compare and contrast previous forecasts to what actually happened. With just a quick glance at Forecast Pro’s “waterfall” reports you can zero in on what’s working and what isn’t.

Exception Reporting

Forecast Pro’s flexible exception reporting allows you to focus on areas that need your attention. The reports are easily customizable to reflect different performance metrics ‒ such as forecast vs. history or whether forecast error exceeds a pre-defined threshold – and give you a quick way to identify potential problem areas.

Product Comparison

To satisfy a wide range of business forecasting needs, we offer three editions of Forecast Pro-Forecast Pro 100, Forecast Pro Unlimited and Forecast Pro TRAC.

The information in the table will help guide you toward the appropriate edition, but our team is more than happy to help you find the right match. Contact us to discuss your business needs with one of our forecasting experts.

Key Capabilities Checklist FP100 FP Unlimited FP TRAC
Data Capacity      
Number of Items You Can Forecast Per Project 100 Unlimited Unlimited
Command Line Operation   X X
Tools for Creating Accurate Forecasts      
Broad range of forecasting methods X X X
Automatic “best pick” model selection X X X
Custom model specification at any level X X X
Overrides for Adding Judgment to Forecasts      
Up to 11 retainable override rows X X X
Overrides at any level with reconciliation X X X
Override commenting with audit reports X X X
Team Forecasting      
Review colleagues’ projects & make changes X X X
Consolidate multiple projects into master X X X
Flexibility for Working w/ Forecasts & Reporting      
Numeric reports and graphic displays X X X
Inclusion of history and/or forecasted values X X X
Customizable reports with filtering X X X
Safety stock and reorder point X X X
ABC/Pareto analysis X X X
Conversions to multiple units of measure     X
Hierarchy “Shuffling” (multiple hierarchies)     X
Time fences     X
Forecast Accuracy Measurement & Tracking      
Out-of-sample simulation X X X
Forecast archive database     X
Waterfall reports for analyzing accuracy     X
Exception Reporting      
Forecast vs. actual reports     X
Forecast vs. history reports     X
Forecast vs. archive reports     X
Forecast range reports     X
Waterfall reports     X
Customizable Forecast Worksheets      
Integrate multiple forecasts for S&OP     X
Import pertinent outside information     X
Calculate new rows based on existing rows     X

Forecasting Methods

The Right Tool for the Job

With Forecast Pro, you can create accurate forecasts quickly and easily using proven statistical forecasting methods. Research has shown that no single method works best for all data, which is why Forecast Pro provides a complete range of forecasting approaches to address all types of business needs. Forecast Pro’s models accommodate seasonal demand, product hierarchies, product promotions, slow-moving items, causal variables, outliers and more.

Expert Selection takes the guesswork out of forecasting. The built-in expert system analyzes your data, selects the appropriate forecasting technique, builds the model and calculates the forecasts–it even explains its reasoning in ordinary English!

Twelve different Holt-Winters exponential smoothing models are provided to accommodate a wide range of data characteristics. The robustness of exponential smoothing makes it ideal when there are no leading indicators, and when the data are too short or volatile for Box–Jenkins. You can select the model and set the parameters yourself or let Forecast Pro do it automatically.

For stable data sets, Forecast Pro supports a multiplicative seasonal Box-Jenkins model. The model can be built completely automatically or interactively using a full range of screen-oriented diagnostics.

If there are important leading indicators, use Forecast Pro’s dynamic regression. You can include independent variables, lagged or transformed variables and build generalized Cochrane–Orcutt models. Using Forecast Pro’s self–interpreting diagnostics, you can build and compare alternative models with a few clicks of the mouse.

Event models extend exponential smoothing by providing adjustments for special events such as promotions, strikes or other irregular occurrences. You can adjust for events of several different types such as promotions of varying sizes or types, or movable holidays like Easter and Rosh Hashanah. Creating, adjusting and maintaining events is easy using Forecast Pro’s intuitive Event Manager.

Multiple-level models allow you to aggregate data into groups that can be reconciled using a top–down or bottom-up approach to produce consistent forecasts at all levels of aggregation. Seasonal and event indexes can be extracted from the higher–level aggregates and applied to lower-level data.

Forecast Pro includes several methods for forecasting new products, including forecasting by analogy, item supersession and the Bass diffusion model.

This is a useful technique if you are forecasting data with more than 12 observations per year. Seasonal Simplification reduces the number of seasonal indexes used to model the data and often substantially improves forecast accuracy.

Croston’s intermittent demand model and discrete data models are provided to accommodate low volume and “sparse” data (i.e., data where the demand is often zero).

Curve fitting provides a quick and easy way to identify the general form of the curve which your data are following. Forecast Pro supports four types of curves–straight line, quadratic, exponential and growth (S–curve).

This set of “simple” models can be extremely useful. Moving average, “same as last year,” percentage growth and fixed forecast value models are included.

Implementation

Forecast Pro is an off-the-shelf software package specifically designed for fast, easy implementation. It integrates with other systems ‒ including ERP, MRP, BI and more ‒ and can scale with your systems and planning processes as your organization grows and matures.

Easy Systems Integration

The primary input into Forecast Pro is historical sales data, although other relevant information such as the unit of measure conversions, explanatory variables, and other forecasts can be imported into the application. The primary output from Forecast Pro is typically monthly or weekly demand forecasts, which often are fed directly into ERP/MRP systems to drive other planning processes. Data input and output are facilitated through either a simple file interface (Excel, CSV or text) or through a direct database connection (ODBC). With more than 12,000 organizations using Forecast Pro, users have integrated Forecast Pro with virtually every system under the sun.

Training and Implementation Assistance

We recommend budgeting for 2 to 5 days of our Training and Implementation Assistance for successful implementation of Forecast Pro. We train our users in the use of our solutions using their real-life data and that makes the training much more effective than standard “plain vanilla” training. Such training depending upon your convenience and preference can be delivered either web-based or on-site and can also accommodate a combination of these two formats.

Web-Based Training

If you need to train up to three people, our Web-based training provide customised training with minimal disruption to your business. Not only is this format the most cost-effective means for you and your colleagues to learn about the software, but you can also get it scheduled quickly since no travel is involved and you don’t need to block out a full day for the training as we can deliver the training in 2 to 4 hour blocks.

Please contact us for more information

On-Site Training

Holding customised training at your own facilities is an effective way to train the users of Forecast Pro. On-site training provide you with the flexibility to offer multiple sessions to cover key topics in-depth and is generally more interactive than web based training and possibly more effective particularly for a larger group.. In addition, you can train people from different functional areas in your organization who play important roles in your related business processes in different areas of the software. If you opt for onsite training, we recommend a minimum 2-day engagement.

Please contact us for more information
 

Technical Specifications

Forecast Pro runs on any Windows-based platform and the application itself has modest requirements. Beyond that, requirements generally scale with the size of the data.

Operating Systems:
Windows (7, 8, 10+)

Hardware:
A Pentium-based processor or newer—a minimum of 4-8 GB RAM and 2GB hard drive space is recommended. Forecast Pro can be installed on a client machine or server (including Citrix/Windows Server). Native 32-bit or 64-bit versions are available.

FORECAST PRO Customers

Learn more about our customers and how Forecast Pro has helped them to improve their forecasting.

Who Uses Forecast Pro?

Not sure if Forecast Pro is the right fit for your organization? Learn more about the needs of our clients.

Read More

Customer List

As the market leader in forecasting software, Forecast Pro is used by thousands of organizations worldwide.

Read More

Success Stories

We invite you to hear from real customers about how Forecast Pro has had a direct impact on their bottom line results.

Read More

“Forecast Pro is so easy to use that we were able to create forecasts on the first day that it was installed. Within the first year, Forecast Pro helped us to reduce our forecast error to single digits.”

FIDELITY INVESTMENTS

WENDELL HULL

“Forecast Pro is one of the quickest yet accurate forecasting tools that I have ever come across.”

FRITO-LAY, INC.

OSMAN MUSTAFA

“Our forecasts are used for everything from planning/scheduling all the way up to revenue projection by the executive team. We have a full compliment of Forecast Pro products at Oberto.”

OBERTO SAUSAGE COMPANY

ERIC KAPINOS