Vanguard Predictive Planning™ for Finance
Budgeting and planning software
Automate your budgeting and planning processes with Vanguard Predictive Planning. Our advanced analytics-driven starting values eliminate time wasted on data entry. Users can make changes to the system-generated values as needed, saving countless hours. Additionally, Vanguard Predictive Planning supports rolling forecasts and continuous planning.
Whether you need to plan for
Why Vanguard Predictive Planning for budgeting and planning
Vanguard Software’s approach to financial planning is based on two unique abilities:
- Tight integration of budgeting and forecasting processes
- Multi-plan capability – multiple departments can share and compare forecasts and plans
Most organizations begin each budget cycle with the previous period’s budget. They make adjustments based on high-level goals and set allocations from a top-down view of needs. Vanguard is different. Our process begins with an objective statistical forecast and can, ultimately, integrate a complete platform of enterprise planning capability.
You gain three distinct advantages:
- Begin each budget cycle with the most accurate financial projection possible, drawn from rigorous statistical analysis
- Budget with optimal efficiency based on a complete understanding of the trends, seasonal patterns, outliers, product life-cycle effects, and other factors that shape your projections
- Integrate Budgeting with other Vanguard modules for sales and operations planning or use it to drive your entire Integrated Business Planning (IBP) or S&OP process
Advanced analytics meets automation
Vanguard Predictive Planning for Budgeting and Planning simplifies what-if testing, data visualization, reporting, and roll-ups for consensus forecasting and multi-team enterprise planning. The module combines advanced-analytic capabilities (seasonality, product life-cycle, etc.) with powerful automation to deliver an essential tool for business users across the enterprise. Unmatched workflow and tracking features bring together projections from various teams and groups for multi-team and multi-plan collaboration.
- User-centric design ensures optimal forecast methodology, visual display, and exportability
- Web-based architecture unites multiple teams on a single platform for exceptional transparency and collaboration
- Plugs-in to any core enterprise system for complete, seamless integration
- Consolidates and manages all financial data on one platform for all budgeting, planning, and forecasting needs
- Unlimited what-if analyses of short- and long-term financial goals and decisions
- Automates data management, forecasting, and reporting in real-time
Seamless, Multi-Plan Integration
- Set guidance: create financial targets and budgets that link to sales and demand forecast
- Automate conversions: break-down high-level targets and budgets into lower-level forecasts, and revenue targets into unit-demand forecasts, automatically
- Share and compare: include an unlimited number of plans (executive targets, financial budgets, sales plans, annual operating plans (AOP), etc.)
Gap analysis
- Reports and analysis to visualize how and why forecasts and plans are different
- Ability to slice and dice data by any attribute (gaps by business units, geography, product line, etc.)
Consensus forecasting
Building consensus among demand leaders in sales & marketing and supply leaders in manufacturing, procurement, and logistics is critical to the S&OP process. The budgeting and planning software module
Let your teams automate and integrate budgeting processes without relying on IT. Allow users to focus on data and transparency rather than protecting their version of the truth.
- Pre-built application
- Excel-like user interface
- Advanced budget analysis
- Driver-based planning
- Cross-department collaboration
- Complete version history with
extensive audit trail - Permission-based access level
- Business process-based workflow with alerts and notification
Featured resources
Solution brochure
Case study
White paper
Why Vanguard Predictive Planning™
Decision-Centric
Automate planning processes with a powerful AI engine and an unlimited number of strategy choices and constraints. Build advanced workflows, set alerts and notifications, and manage by exception. Provide planners with the most accurate and up-to-date predictions that will result in harmonious, goal-based decision-making across all plans.
Collaborative
Leverage team wisdom in meaningful ways with Vanguard's Collaboration Hub. Broadcast messaging, system-wide searching, and hashtagging are all supported by the built-in, actionable collaboration feed. Incorporate the team's hard-earned wisdom while staying true to the data. Plug in key knowledge to improve forecast and planning accuracy.
Probabilistic
Remain resilient against variability with Vanguard's market-leading advanced analytics: artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and an optimization engine. Analyze what-if scenarios with the support of Monte Carlo simulations to understand the probabilities of various outcomes. Turn uncertainty into profit.
Unified
Enable end-to-end visibility and alignment. At the heart of Vanguard Predictive Planning™ is our Unified High-Performance In-Memory Object (UHIO) database which supports a unified data model across all plans. Watch a change to the sales forecast impact the demand, supply, capacity, production, and financial plans in real-time.
Client Results
“Billions [of dollars] in operating margin and trillions in market capitalization separate supply chain winners from losers,” according to AMR Research. With Vanguard Predictive Planning™, best-in-class planners see:
%
Reduction in inventory
%
Increase in perfect-order fulfillment (complete, accurate, and on time)
%
Shorter cash-to-cash cycle times
%
Fewer stock-outs than competitors
Cash Flow Forecasting
Vanguard Cash Flow Forecasting software is an enterprise planning tool that integrates your workflow and data systems to deliver fast, accurate cash-flow forecasts.
Government cash flow forecasting
Government Cash Flow Forecasting is enterprise software built to give Departments of Transportation (DOT) and other state agencies the edge in budgeting, planning, and resource efficiency.
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.
Meet a few of our clients

Subscribe to our blog
Never miss industry news, technical information, or thought leadership articles.
SALES
919.859.4101 (P)
919.851.9457 (F)
SUPPORT
919.859.4101 (P)
support@vanguardsw.com
CAREERS
opportunities@vanguardsw.com
© 2021 Vanguard Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy