|
Introducing Profit Scout, the latest tool for Executive Management
 Profit
Scout is a new planning tool provided by forecast engineering,
LLC that is
focused on providing advanced information for executive decision
makers facing difficult issues in today's competitive business
environment. Coupled with other well known tools (e.g. I2,
JDA, etc.) for operational decision making, Profit Scout provides
sound topside sales forecasts founded on prior historical
performance and economic factors that define your customer’s
appetite and long term trend. We go beyond the limitation
of Demand Planning (offered within most ERP systems) to offer
a holistic approach that proactively predicts in any economic
environment to help you drive profits. To create its forecasts,
Profit Scout “reads” over 200 national leading
indicators to clarify the market factors uniquely driving
your business.
No
longer is Forecasting a process that remains elusive
The
advent of powerful desktop systems now allows you to understand
your business better than ever before. The Profit Scout tool
is designed to unlock the power of your historical performance
combined with sound statistics to provide realistic and useful
topside projections. At its core, the solution provides a
desktop solution for defining the factors that are predictive
of your customer trade-off’s to uniquely predict your
sales. With this information, you are positioned to accurately
predict the affects of “pending” shocks (e.g.
war with Iraq, interest rate reduction, etc.) to the economy.
All of this information is provided at a point in time (e.g.
from 1 month to 24 months) where key decisions are made. As
a result, you not only receive this information so you can
drive increased profitability, but you can do so with a definable
and verifiable result.
Forecasting
drives inventory management and bottom line profits
At
the highest level, strategic asset management starts with
the development of a topside sales forecast. Once a topside
forecast is created, historical ratios provide a means for
establishing operational goals given a topside forecast. In
past several years, many companies have spent considerable
time and effort improving their operational efficiencies for
asset improvement. In this quest, however, many have failed
to recognize the impact that accurate forecasting has on inventory
levels and lost sales.
There
are four key factors that determine inventory levels, including:
forecast accuracy, lead time, order cycle time, and service
level. Of these, forecast accuracy is the biggest driver of
inventory levels and the overall supply chain requirements.
Many key factors impact the bottom line performance (e.g.
inventory tax, space costs, markdowns, transportation costs,
etc.) are directly related to forecast accuracy. Profit Scout
can help you plug wasteful leaks and inefficiencies by seeing
tomorrow with more clarity and accuracy.
We
accurately foresee trend in a changing environment
The
approach within Profit Scout is applicable for sales planning
at both the national and MSA level. Put simply, we help you
create more reliable projections upon which to base your critical
decisions utilizing your past, what is happening today, and
how this all is predictive of your future performance. In
today’s complex and changing market, we can provide
you with the trends and clarity to make the “right”
decisions. As the economy impacting your customers change,
so do your unique model results.
Profit
Scout provides forecasts each month as the economic figures
are reported. Further, the model considers your management
style and decision attitudes (as reflected in your sales history,
stores growth and seasonality) in determining which of these
leading indicators are actually driving your business. The
market driven “actuals” speak more clearly than
methods that attempt to guess at what your market is buying.
Again, the results are immediately clear and can be tracked
against the top side forecasts you may have developed based
on your historic data. The bottom line here is that you can
see what is going on much earlier; you gain the insight that
your market is reporting so that you can sharpen all decisions;
and best yet, you can see the reductions in costs in all aspects
of that supply chain before it sneaks up and bites you unawares.
The results are measurable
Detailed
below is an example of our model performance:
We
created these projections in January of 2002. We did this
to show the value of the approach over time and the predictiveness
of the numbers. Focus on the cumulative values because this
demonstrates the ability of the approach to decipher long
term trend. Because we do not include the promotional calendar,
monthly misses are expected. All of the information contained
in this exhibit is available through public means. The business
above is not a current client of ours. As such, we believe
we could be even more accurate if we had better “inside”
information.
We are solutions experts with real life experience
At
forecast engineering, we provide solutions. Our experience
in the executive decision processes of national and regional
retailers positions us to provide solutions and operational
alternatives in a wide array of areas. Profit Scout was created
to provide a solution where there was a void in the marketplace.
As a user, we searched for this solution and could not find
it.
We
would appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate how this model
works (showing how easy it is to use and integrate) and the
value of the results. As a solutions expert, we are always
available to assist in reviewing other areas of the business
(e.g. Testing, Logistics, Store receiving and Processing,
Operations, etc.) to streamline your processes. Further, we
have the skills to review your P&A systems to highlight
inadequacy of your methods and potential solutions.
The
Profit Scout software tool programmed by www.eboris.com.
Please contact us through email, SMoon@fe-llc.com,
or call at 1.877.fe4.cast.
|
