Baltika PC (Goods4Cast). System implementation of demand forecasting and sales planning

Project History

Turnover of Baltika brewery for 2007 made 2.25 billion euros. The insignificant error at annual planning of sales could lead several million euros to loss. The Baltika PC set as the purpose increase in forecasting accuracy of sales at all levels with the accompanying increase in controllability and transparency of planning processes of sales. In 2008 in the Baltika PC the solution on the Goods4Cast platform providing sales planning support was implemented.

A system allows to build forecasts and to plan sales on months for 12 months ahead. Forecasts and plans are made separately on each position of the range of goods.

Project Features

The project was executed in several stages.

The first stage consisted in approval of processes of use of a system, structure of data, techniques of forecasting and planning, the list of algorithms, requirements to the equipment and other requirements were specified.

Because the Customer located limited scope of data for the last periods, at setup of a System the steadiest versions of prediction algorithms were selected.

In sales of goods of Baltika different types of structures of a trend and seasonality were detected that allowed to increase planning accuracy due to use of set of different algorithms. Implementation of the Gods4Cast system included their following types:

• classical (for goods with a short sales history);
• trend (for goods with the expressed trend);
• seasonal (for goods with the expressed seasonality);
• the mixed type (for goods with the expressed seasonality and a trend).

At the second stage integration of a system with the ERP system of Monolit-Info company was for the first time executed and the Goods4Cast system is unrolled.

The project came to the end with testing and input of a system in operation.

Functional characteristics

The solution Forecsys allowed the Baltika PC to arrange process of approval of sales plans in distributed environment, to make it more managed and clear for all participants.

Forecasting system testing on data of Baltika from December, 2007 till May, 2008 showed that at the expense of the Goods4Cast system forecast accuracy improved at all planning levels, improvement of accuracy of monthly plans averaged 18.6% in comparison with the procedure of sales planning which was used earlier.

Project perspectives

Within development of the project it will be executed:

• implementation of the system modules considering additional factors for the purpose of further increase in accuracy of sales planning;
• implementation of functionality of accounting of the purposes and tasks of the Baltika PC and also their approval of the forecast from the market and distribution by each goods item of the range;
• expansion of functionality of a system for support of sales planning on regions.