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Salescast - inventory optimization made EASY
A web app that delivers complete inventory optimization by providing reorder points (
"when to order?"), order quantity (
"how much to order?") and return on investment for your inventory (
"which service levels to choose?"). Best suited for retailers, wholesalers and eCommerce.
No statistical skills required. Suitable for both very large to small companies. Salescast imports data directly from your existing business app and generates Excel and database exports.
Video introduction
Screenshots, demo and sample report
Stop forecasting, start optimizing!
Not enough inventory and you miss out on sales, too much inventory and your costs explode. Accurat demand forecasting is a cornerstone of inventory optimization. However, forecasting is only part of the problem: Safety stock, reorder points, order quantity, service levels and your order practice all need to be determined.
Salescast, a web application, uses Lokad's unique forecasting and analytic capabilities that simplify the problem for you by giving you a complete inventory analysis, including reorder points, optimal order quantity and service level optimization.
Pricing is by monthly subscription and
depends on the number of forecasts you require. No setup cost. No termination cost. When you stop using Salescast, we stop charging. No questions asked.
Achieve
complete process automation with Salescast. Pull data from your current IT systems, and receive results either through Excel sheets, or directly injected into your existing business app. Ongoing usage of Salescast requires near-zero manpower.
Get
the most accurate forecasts on the market, as Lokad manages all demand patterns on your behalf: seasonality, trends, product life cycle, promotions, cannibalizations, etc.
Sign-up for your free account in 60 seconds. From this account, log into Salescast. Within Salescast, upload your historical data and retrieve your forecasts. Setting-up the data import is a matter of hours for a database administrator. The Lokad team is here to assist you,
just send us an email;
Does Salescast apply to your company?
If you have inventory, yes it does. Someone, somewhere, is already producing forecasts, because inventory is nothing but anticipated demand. And more often than not, the person doing it doesn't have the word
forecast in his or her job title. Nevertheless, the
level of inventory optimization that your company is able to achieve is directly related to the accuracy of forecasts and inventory optimization metrics. Learn how
Salescast helps you to achieve better inventory levels.
Strengths and weaknesses of statistics
Statistical forecasting
isn't magic. The fundamental assumption behind this methodology is that the most
tangible source of information when predicting the
short term evolution of your business is the actual historical data of your business itself. Learn more about
pros and cons of statistical forecasting.Why choose Salescast over competitors?
In short, when it comes to analytic tools, there is
no substitute for a real data benchmark . But then, Lokad is
not your usual demand forecasting solution. If you're already familiar with our competitors' offerings, Lokad may puzzle you at first. We deliver forecasts,
not forecasting toolkits, and tackle the inventory optimization problem completely for you. As a result, no expertise in statistics is required.
See how our technology compares to traditional approaches.
Scope of Salescast and complementary apps
Our technology isn't intended for stand-alone usage. Salescast leverages your existing IT systems, and potentially feeds further apps that help your company get the most from our forecasts. Let's review
what Salescast is, and what it is not.
Features: forecasting and inventory optimization
Salescast lets you produce extensive
Microsoft Excel-based inventory reports that include:
- Reorder points (i.e. optimal inventory level)
- Optimal order quantities (e.g. economic order quantity)
- Sales forecasts (daily, weekly or monthly)
- Key inventory optimization metrics (e.g. lead demand)
Forecasts are typically produced at the lowest level (per product or per SKU) because that's the data aggregation level your company needs to optimize its inventory.
Learn more about Salescast features.
How does the forecasting engine work?
Our technology combines a vast library of statistical models, an extensive model selection mechanism, a multiple time-series modeling approach and a native cloud computing infrastructure to power such a processing-intensive solution. Although Lokad's forecasting engine is somewhat of a
black box in the sense that you don't get the details of forecast generation, you can get more insights into
how the forecasting engine works.
For a more in-depth viewpoint, check our technology page along with its FAQ.Quantile forecasts and reorder points
In March 2012, Lokad has introduced a
radically new approach to optimize reorder points named
quantile forecasting. Concretely, benchmarks against Lokad's own
classic forecasting technology indicate that quantile forecasts enable most businesses to achieve
20% less inventory or
20% less stockouts by switching to this new technology. Since Lokad is already outperforming
accuracy-wise our traditional forecasting competitors, the overall gain of adopting Salescast may be even higher.
Understanding the pricing
We charge on a monthly basis for the number of forecasts consumed by your company. For example, if you have 200 products to be forecast 10 weeks in advance, twice per month, then the total number of forecast points is 200*10*2 = 4,000, which amounts to $38/month (
*).
No setup fee and no strings attached: the day you stop using Salescast, we stop charging. There is a major
volume discount too. Learn
how Lokad pricing applies to Salescast.
(*) Provided as an example, check the pricing page to get current pricing terms.Getting started
Going into production with Lokad
does not require upfront payments (free trial) however a couple of business hours need to be invested to make sure the historical data is properly made available to Salescast.
For a mid-sized company, the process typically goes as follows:
- Issue instructions to IT(*) and supervise the POC (Proof of Concept): 1h.
- IT prepares data to be imported: 3h.
- Management validates forecasts: 1h.
- IT finalizes access to data for production: 1/2 days (1 person)
(*) Yes, IT has to be involved, importing data from Excel will not work.Read more about the setup process and the historical data needed to
feed Salescast.
First forecast report? Expect the unexpected
Unless you're already experienced in statistics, the first time you have an in-depth look at the numbers produced by Lokad, you will most likely be puzzled.
Statistics is a counter-intuitive science, which produces counter-intuitive results. Nevertheless, those results have a very real impact on your business.
Let's shed some light on this first report.
Importing your historical data (technical)
If you are using QuickBooks, please read these instructions Salescast pulls data from a remotely reachable SQL database that need to be formatted following the guidelines of Lokad. The assistance of your company IT is typically required to complete this step. The pages listed just below will help the IT teams to handle the operation.
Security notes
From a legal viewpoint,
we treat every single piece of data exposed to Lokad by prospects and clients as if the data were under a strict NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement). The data are and will remain the property of your company. Security is the second most important concern for Lokad (forecasting accuracy being the first). If needed, we will gladly sign an NDA with your company on simple request. Just email us your template.
From a technical viewpoint, Lokad is hosted on Windows Azure, the cloud computing infrastructure from
Microsoft, a computing environment that we believe to be about one of the most (if not the most) secure on the market. By relying on Windows Azure, we benefit from all the ongoing security efforts and monitoring that
Microsoft is applying to its own computing infrastructure.
Last but not least, if your data is too sensitive to be exposed to Lokad, then we have a clever trick available named
data obfuscation. In short, since Lokad is a purely statistical engine,
we don't need actual product names or anything that could identify the item. It is possible to feed Salescast with raw sales data where all product names have been replaced by database identifiers (the same applies for tags).