Major Improvements & Features
Forecast Manager Tree Search
By popular request, we have added a search box to the Forecast Manager tree. Type in whatever you are looking for, and it will filter the tree to that node, including its ancestors so you can review in-context.
Place Orders Save / Load Your Order
Also by popular request, this version of StockIQ introduces the ability to save an order you are building and come back to it later. When returning to your order, you have the ability to reload it as it was (with dates updated), include new items that have since become needed, and even update your old order quantities with new requirements if the data or day has changed.
Forecast Snapshot and Error History Improvements
You have all asked for some improvements to forecast error reporting, and many of those requests are included in this version.
The first addition is including snapshots at all levels of the forecast hierarchy, not just the bottom one. This will enable error reporting on aggregate levels as well as bottom levels.
In the forecast snapshot window, the snapshot that is one lead time ago is now highlighted to help get a sense of your forecast error at lead time, and the error value is now displayed for each snapshot.
The Forecast Error Tab in Forecast Manager has been updated as well, with new error measurements and configurable ranges for low/medium/high forecast error warning highlights.
Forecast Disaggregation / Top-Down Options
This version of StockIQ introduces new options for forecast dis-aggregation for when you are doing top-down forecasting, allowing you to choose between skipping locked children, or prorating for them when doing top-down forecasting. See Global Demand Forecast Settings for more information.
Depletion Forecasting
Building on the ability to give StockIQ obsolete dates, this version of StockIQ goes the next step and will now calculate a depletion forecast for all items that are no longer being ordered. This is triggered if they are marked as discontinued in your ERP, marked as Do Not Order by order policy, or if they are replaced using an Item-Site-Replacement. Enabling this can be done in the Demand Forecast Settings.
This is used to know the item's final depletion date, after which no demand forecast is calculated, and also a complete depletion report is now available in the Discontinued Items screen.
Forecast Setting Additions
This version of StockIQ introduces the ability to specify a forecast freeze horizon in your forecast settings, either as a global default, or specifically for certain items. This can be useful to try and stabilize the demand forecast for production reasons, or to prevent last-minute changes from upsetting purchasing behavior as well. You can see this in the Forecast Settings Tab
Also newly added is an option to instruct StockIQ not to begin forecasting until at least some minimum number of hits exist for a particular hierarchy node. For example, if a new customer or new customer group buys an item for the first time, you may not want to automatically begin forecasting for that, since it could be a one-off. Now, you can instruct StockIQ not to forecast right away, but wait for 2,3,4, etc. number of hits before generating a forecast. Coupled with the Unusual Sales screen, this can make sure you are not getting spurious forecasts.
Finally, the last new option is the ability to Prorate First Period Sales. When enabled, StockIQ will look at the first period of sales for a product, and determine how far into the period that first sale occurred, then prorate "what would our total have been if we were selling it the whole month?" This can be helpful to prevent the 2nd month looking like large growth relative to the first, when in reality it was just that the 1st month (or week) was only a partial period of sales. In turn, projections of growth can be lessened somewhat. This is useful for high volume items with many individual smaller sales, where the number of missed days within the period can be important to the overall sales total.
Minor Improvements
- Forecast Imports check for site name in addition to site code to figure out data being provided
- Consumption added to Dependent Statistical Forecast mode
- Add "Explosion Method" column to BoM Detail
- Added option for what to do with open sales orders when Copy Inventory is false in Item Site Replacements
- Configurable range for fair-share-weight number of months of history for calculating the fair-share-weights when doing top-down forecast distribution.
- Add cost and price related columns to various screens
- Add 4 and 8 week buckets for inventory burndown in Executive Summary
- StockIQ will monitor for low memory on application server upon which it is running and email warnings when necessary