Vanguard Predictive Planning™ with Advanced Analytics
Vanguard Predictive Planning™ with Advanced Analytics
Advanced analytics
Vanguard Advanced Analytics raises enterprise strategy and decision-making to a whole new level. Powerful modeling and simulation tools plus collaborative workflow design bring expert capability to knowledge workers across the enterprise.
With Vanguard Advanced Analytics, you can:
- Assess competing courses of action
- Compare risk-reward scenarios
- Test ideas virtually
- Refine short-term forecasts with demand-sensing technology that collects and analyzes live-streaming sales orders or POS data from any ERP or transaction system.
Vanguard Advanced Analytics applies an exhaustive range of time-series and model-based methods not only to capture and extrapolate historical patterns, but also to simulate and compare innumerable outcomes from seemingly unprecedented events and circumstances. These can include product launches, proposed changes to business plans, or long-range capital and investment decisions with effects that will span an entire product life-cycle, or even generations of products.
What sets Vanguard apart
Enterprise-grade capability
Companies reach peak performance when sales, operations, and finance teams work together to forecast and plan their business. Vanguard’s Integrated Business Planning (IBP) and Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) capabilities help finance teams bring together forecasts and plans from other departments, reconcile gaps between plans, and build consensus.
Monte Carlo simulation
With Vanguard, you can simulate complex systems to model uncertainty and volatility and better manage business opportunity and risk. Vanguard reveals the full range of potential business outcomes and the probability of each with expected values for distinct courses of action. For example:
- Incorporate multiple sources of uncertainty into your forecast model
- Run simulations 100 times faster than spreadsheet add-ins — 1,500 times faster with the grid computing option
- Automate sensitivity analysis
- Run reports with distribution graphs and statistics
- Utilize distribution gallery
- Automate distribution fitting using historical data
- User-defined distributions
- Employ correlated inputs
- Utilize an unlimited number of stochastic inputs
New-product forecasting
In addition to Monte Carlo simulation, Vanguard Advanced Analytics can apply multiple advanced techniques to new-product forecasting or combine various methods into a single forecast. This is achieved through:
- Comparable forecasting: Applies the historical pattern of an established product to a new product. In Vanguard Predictive Planning, users can select comparable products by any attribute – product family, SKU code, region, etc.
- Spread curve: Applies the pattern of a demand factor (e.g. seasonality, decay, life cycle, region) to a new-product forecast.
- Supersession: Used when a new product is likely to cannibalize or replace an existing product or set of products.
- Adoption modeling: Captures new-product launch effects and long-range product life cycle effects.
Long-range forecasting
Vanguard Predictive Planning complements its exhaustive range of time-series forecasting methods with model-based approaches that factor product life-cycle effects into long-range forecasts. Vanguard Predictive Planning’s model-based methods include:
- Monte Carlo simulation
- Decision analysis
- Stochastic optimization
Featured resources
White paper
Case study
White paper
What our clients have to say
Technical features
Promotion planning
The ability to model and manage promotions (or integrate with third-party promotion tools) is a key differentiator of Vanguard Predictive Planning. With a robust set of techniques to model promotions, Vanguard Predictive Planning sets itself apart.
Advanced workflows
Workflows are the backbones of every supply chain plan. Vanguard Predictive Planning offers users advanced, easy-to-define and easy-to-support workflows to enable both planning and S&OP processes.
Collaboration Hub
Vanguard Predictive Planning comes with an industry-leading collaboration portal. Never again will organizations to never again have siloed planning or limitations to those who can collaborate.
End-to-end planning
Vanguard Predictive Planning is an integrated business planning platform that provides organizations with true end-to-end planning and visibility.
Master production scheduling
Vanguard Predictive Planning creates the optimal schedule for production based on rules and constraints.
Simulation
Move from single-threaded what-if scenario planning to true simulation. Monte Carlo simulation instantly allows you to run hundreds or thousands of scenarios with a range of variables.
Monte Carlo simulation
Plan based on probabilities and improve forecast confidence intervals using Monte Carlo simulation.
What-if scenarios
Complete support for unlimited what-if scenarios that you can save and share. Additionally, non-forecast owners can propose forecast changes for any scenario.
Real-time analytics
With a unified data model, Vanguard Predictive Planning delivers analytics in real-time as soon as any changes occur to the plan or data. Additionally, users can set alerts to be notified of such changes.
Demand profiles
Forecast automation and accuracy plus optimized inventory and operations increase profits and profitability by reducing stockouts, lost sales, emergency orders, and labor and customer acquisition costs.
Exception-based planning
Mature supply chains manage by exception; Vanguard Predictive Planning enables extensive exception-based processes.
Machine learning
Vanguard Predictive Planning leverages machine learning algorithms as part of its artificial intelligence capabilities.
Market-leading statistical forecasting
Supply chain planning software offers usersan array of forecasting methods. Vanguard Predictive Planning is the most robust on the market, providing users with the most accurate results.
Demand sensing
Vanguard Predictive Planning includes proprietary forecasting methods for near real-time forecasts.
Financial forecasts
While some solutions can “dollarize” plans, Vanguard Predictive Planning creates financial forecasts, including cashflow, net income, and various financial reports, out-of-the-box.
Causal forecasting
Organizations should try to determine the leading indicators that impact
AI engine
Vanguard Predictive Planning leverages artificial intelligence across multiple features of the platform including forecast method selection, demand prediction and pattern detection, and automation of tasks.
S&OP workflows
Workflows are the backbones of every supply chain plan. Vanguard Predictive Planning offers users advanced, easy-to-define and easy-to-support workflows to enable planning and S&OP processes.
Automatic detection
Vanguard Predictive Planning automatically detects and excludes outliers from the forecast.
BI and dashboards
There is no need for a third-party BI solution. Vanguard Predictive Planning includes robust reporting and dashboard capabilities.
Top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out forecasting
Regardless of how your organization generates forecasts, Vanguard Predictive Planning supports it all. Vanguard also supports any combination of variables including SKU-location, SKU-warehouse, customer, and more.
In-memory what-if analysis
With support for millions of SKUs, Vanguard users can instantly forecast for any number of products and scenarios. Vanguard’s in-memory database (UHIO) enables lightning-fast calculations so users have no downtime.
Collaborative forecasting
Collaborative planning and forecasting
Segmentation
Vanguard Predictive Planning supports a wide array of SKU segmentation methods including, but not limited to, ABC, speed, cost, and service levels.
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