Beyond the Forecast
Vanguard lets you go beyond forecasting by telling you
exactly what drives your forecast and what you can do
about it.
- What-if analysis: Checks your
forecasts under critical scenarios.
- Sensitivity analysis: Reviews
your forecasts and determines which factors have
the greatest impacts.
- Forecast optimization: Determines
the best possible decisions in order to improve
future outcomes.
In addition, forecasts are always inputs to some other
decision-making process within an organization; so,
Vanguard lets you dynamically link your forecasts to
these processes. For example, Manufacturing can directly
link to product demand forecasts from Marketing and Sales
and use them in real-time to optimally schedule
production as part of a Sales and Operations Planning
(S&OP) activity.
Forecasting Software Comparisons
Vanguard offers four products for business foresting:
The following sections will help you decide which
product best fits your needs. You can use the Product Comparison
Chart for a quick overview of each product's
capabilities.
Operational Forecasting Suite
The Operation Forecasting Suite is designed to prepare
time-series forecasts in support of
operational planning. To use this product you must have a
good set of historical data on which to base the
forecasts and your underlying business conditions must be
stable. With these conditions, the Operational
Forecasting Suite can generate very accurate forecasts.
Vanguard's underlying forecast engine has ranked first
in accuracy in every benchmark we have ever performed
using published data sets. The product also support unlimited
batch forecasting, giving you the ability to
forecast demand for thousands of SKUs at a time.
For more details, refer to the Operational
Forecasting Suite product page.
Strategic Forecasting Suite
The Strategic Forecasting Suite includes all
of the capabilities of the Operational Forecasting Suite,
plus the ability to build Monte Carlo Simulation
models. This product is ideal in cases where you have
limited or no historical data, such as in planning a new
product development, choosing the appropriate marketing
plan, or understanding the risks your business faces.
Vanguard's Monte Carlo simulation engine is the
fastest available in any commercial product. Vanguard
even supports Grid-based computing to give you the
ability to perform simulations in seconds that would
otherwise take days to prepare with spreadsheet-based
models.
For more details, refer to the Strategic
Forecasting Suite product page.
Business Analytics Suite
The Business Analytics Suite includes all of
the capabilities of the Operational and Strategic
Forecasting Suites, plus the ability to perform decision
tree analysis and business optimizations.
This product is designed for professional modelers who
need the highest level of functionality.
Once you have generated a good prediction model, the
next step in business planning is to use the model to
test alternative plans in the search for the optimal
plan. The Business Analytics Suite includes a very
powerful optimizer that can automatically find the
optimal business strategy for you.
Vanguard's Stochastic Optimizer can solve any
optimization problem. There are no requirements regarding
linearity, discontinuities, or other model
characteristics that limit virtually all other
optimization tools. The Stochastic Optimizer even
supports Grid-based computing, making it possible to
solve massive problems using spare CPU time on your
colleagues' desktop computers.
For more details, refer to the Business
Analytics Suite product page.
Vanguard System
Each of the products above is deployed as a
single-user desktop application. The Vanguard System
supports all of the capabilities of all of the
products above, but is deployed as a Web-based,
client server application that supports many users. The
server-based delivery makes it possible to collaborate
on large modeling projects and it lets you link your
models to internal applications.
For more details, refer to the Vanguard System
product page.

Vanguard's Forecast Server lets
users prepare batch forecasts using a Web browser
interface.
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