Moms everywhere have been preparing for the holidays since December 26th of last year. If you have a company, you’ve probably been preparing for a while as well. Most people turn to the all-knowing web for advice. If you use this method to prepare your store for the holidays, the internet will advise you to put up some good posters, decorate, and have extra inventory.
These are some good suggestions, but they’re just the very tip of the iceberg. Have you ever “eye-balled” an ingredient while cooking? Taking this vague advice, and nothing else, is like eyeballing salt in your cookies. No amount of milk can make a salty chocolate chip cookie enjoyable. Your company is at a much bigger risk when you eyeball your future demand.
Just ordering a few extras of your most popular products isn’t going to cut it, especially during a holiday. Without accurate business forecasting software, you run the risk of both overstock and stockout situations.
Inventory is expensive, as you know. While you make a profit on sales, overstock does nothing but hurt your finances. Excess inventory requires more space and more man hours to manage, so it raises warehousing and labor costs. On the other hand, facing stockouts doesn’t do anything to strengthen your company either. If a customer comes to purchase a product that you don’t have in stock, not only do you lose that sale, but if they’re able to find it elsewhere they’ll most likely return to the more reliable company in the future.
If you don’t have accurate knowledge of future trends and sales, your planning can never be completely accurate.
For example, let’s say you have a retail clothing store. Your denim jackets have seemed to be a hot item throughout the year, so you decide to order a bunch of extras for the holiday season. The holidays come, and not many of these jackets sell. However, your hoodie sales start rising rapidly. You’re worried you’re going to quickly run out of the hoodies your customers want and be left with the less popular denim jackets. You rush to adjust your marketing plans to advertise the jackets more, and you try to see if you can order more hoodies. Unfortunately, manufacturing doesn’t happen overnight, and you’re not in a very good spot. If you had been using business forecasting software, you would have been able to better prepare for these surprising market changes. You would’ve been able to not only have the right inventory in stock, but you could have initiated a more useful marketing campaign and created a much more accurate budget to rely on.
Inaccurate inventory isn’t just an annoyance; it affects many financial elements of your business. Luckily, there are business budgeting tools available!
Business forecasting is part of the demand planning process. Simply put, it’s when past data is used to predict a future outcome related to the business.
An example of this can be seen as budgeting and forecasting software used to predict the quantity, timing, trends, and more regarding the sales of a company.
Forecasting software for businesses strengthens the companies who utilize it.
As business forecasting software accurately predicts the inventory levels of your business, your finances improve.
Part of the financial improvement is seen in your warehouse as there are more accurate inventory levels. With less amounts of excessive inventory, your warehouse can operate much more effectively; shipments are quicker and more accurate, your turn overrates improve, and your employee schedules are better too.
As your warehouse begins to operate more efficiently, you have the correct number of employees at the right time. Since you know how much demand has been forecast, you’re able to productively schedule your employees to do what really needs to be done.
At Avercast, one of our top priorities is accuracy. Our business forecasting software uses 208 algorithms to provide you with the most accurate forecast possible. These algorithms analyze several different data types, including historical data and current growth. We have over 40 years of supply chain experience, so you can be sure that your operations will improve with our software.
If you use our forecasting software in your retail clothing store, you can forecast color, style, size, brand, etc. At Avercast, we do offer an extremely effective inventory forecasting software, however, we’re able to forecast more than just inventory. Avercast is currently used in many different areas including retail and manufacturing. Avercast strengthens companies of all types, whether they be a large enterprise brand or a smaller company
Now’s the time to stop eyeballing your demand! Your business will only continue to be strengthened as you turn to a software you can trust. If you aren’t currently using business forecasting software, let our experts share with you how your specific company could benefit from it. Contact the Avercast team today to learn more!