Major Improvements & Features
Add Demand History to Forecast Analysis
Added by popular request after the evolution of the Forecast Vs Actuals into the Under/Over forecasted screens: Forecast Analysis now has Actuals related facts included in it, such as demand history, revenue, margin, and forecast error percentages.
New Forecast Manager Error Displays
The "Forecast Error History" screen from previous versions has been replaced with an improved "Forecast Error" screen. Further, the error measures shown in Forecast Manager's Forecast Error Tab have been updated.
Now included in the error is a reference benchmark/naive forecast, which any good forecast should be able to beat most of the time. Comparisons to the benchmark forecast of your statistical and operational forecast are shown backwards-looking, and also at the lead-time lag:
Each of these values are shown in terms of percent, units, and enterprise value (e.g. $).
Additionally, the "Forecast Value Add (FVA)" percentage shows your percentage improvement above the baseline forecast that the StockIQ statistical model is providing.
New Forecast Error Screen
The new Forecast Error Screen is a re-think of the old Forecast Error History screen. It provides information about a host of different error ranges. The highlighted set is now forecast error versus current actuals as of a lead time ago, e.g. what is your expected error at a 1-lead-time-lag, when you are doing your ordering, including Forecast Value-Add and Bias calculations:
Also included are calculations for backwards-looking error only, to measure changes over time, and lag-period only error, to understand what are your average errors from today-forward over the course of your lead-time lag.
At the bottom of the screen are now the snapshots display, which includes the new error values, as well as a tab to Compare Forecasts, so you can look at errors of different types over time.
Finally, the snapshots display itself has been improved to where you can show what you want to compare on your snapshots over time -- unit changes, $/value changes, percent error, unit error changes, and so on:
Tournament
With these new, more extensive error calculations and measures in place, we now implemented a forecast algorithm called "Tournament", whereby StockIQ will run each algorithm against itself to optimize results, and then run each winner to choose the ultimate champion that results in the lowest forecast error. This is measured using highest accuracy at your lead time lag, so that the result is the best forecasts possible when you are doing your ordering.
The tournament will be even more interesting as we roll out additional AI/ML-based algorithms over the remainder of 2024.
Projected On-Hand and Available in Trend Chart
By popular request, we have added series to show projected-on-hand and projected-actual-available to the forecast manager trend chart. These are aligned with first-of-month (or week) values, and are shown when the trend chart is at the same level as the item-site of your hierarchy configuration.
Order Targeting Improvements
The Order Wizard has been enhanced to allow specifying site-by-site targets for your order if need be, allowing you to achieve an order-level target with site-specific targets:
Container Loading Improvements
Additionally, the container loading logic used in the order wizard has been updated to allow targeting in both directions - to the next full to container, or to target DOWN to the last full container, so you can try to avoid an extra container if possible.
Additionally, as with the other order targeting methods, you can now use the days coverage option to fill containers with additional products you may need soon, rather than simply the products that were in your order to begin with.
Container-Load & Expedite Existing Supply Orders
Last release included the new Expedite Wizard, for figuring out how much of an order to expedite via air freight or some other more rapid ship method when you're placing your order.
Now, you can also do this via the open supply orders screen, so you can determine what to expedite on an existing un-shipped set of PO/TO/WO lines, allowing you to issue shipping instructions right up until the last moment before shipping.
Further, you can now run container loading on your open orders to ensure that you can assign expected container loads in a just-in-time fashion, before items are due to ship.
Additional Demand Series Display
As part of moving towards the ability to use additional data feeds to enhance forecast accuracy, we have added the ability to show additional demand series on the forecast chart. Common examples might be "Point of Sale" or "New Store Openings", things like this. The same abilities exist for these series as for the primary demand series, e.g. being able to double-click for details, and so on.
Customer-Item List Price Data Feed
To help StockIQ with reporting on your revenue forecasts for the current year, you can now provide StockIQ with a data feed of customer pricing by item as you know it into the future, so that if you have known/planned pricing changes, StockIQ can incorporate these when calculating your projected revenues for the year.
Minor Improvements
- Add option to allow honoring 0 values in cost-and-price calculations. (normally treated as missing data)
- Add ability to do replenishment forecast consumption weeks-forward and months-forward instead of just current-month or current-week
- Application Notifications for license expiration, version updates, etc.
- Add option to enable/disable post-processors
- Improve consumption logic on the passthrough/statistical dependent forecast option
- Add the item-site note to the Unusual Sales screen
- Performance Improvements in Place Orders Step 1 and 2 for large instances
- Performance Improvements in Place Orders Step 2 for models with large number of alternates
- Refresh Time performance improvements up to 300% for some instances
- Forecasts At-Rest now stored with event effects applied to simplify reporting and API responses
- Add checkbox to turn off/disable the forecast error range
- Add any applicable customer-ship-to categories to the Sales & Margin screen grid columns
- Add available and on-order quantity to stratification detail screen
- Data grid performance improvements and bugfixes
- Add "Worst Inventory Position" and "Inventory Position @ LT" to projected stockouts screen
- Make Sure Last order information available in sub-category rows of place orders step 1
- Add ability to download custom reports via API for on-premise instances
- Add Last Used Date to validation screen
- Add ability to import a desired order cycle interval from ERP (Item Site feed)
- Add grid totals and subtotals for on-hand detail grids
- Add quantity measure options to dashboard and executive summary screens
- Add Date Obsolete to data validation screen
- Add Stocking and Purchase UoM to grids showing open PO's/open supplies
- Many ERP Integration updates & improvements
- Add option to disable estimate consumption when consumption of estimates is being done ERP-side
- Improvements to "New Item" alert triggering conditions
- Promotion logic now incorporates historical replacements when calculating promotion uplift
- Promotions now mapped from old item --> new item when replacements are present
- Performance improvements when uploading orders and have large number of item-site alternates