Forecasting in a High Tech Firm located in the Silicon Valley
Forecasting product plans in a high tech corporation specializing in high performance servers and storage
Background
FirstQuarter worked with a high tech firm located in the Silicon Valley to implement a forecasting system using CPM technologies. The firm has sales & marketing offices throughout the world and a global manufacturing facility in the heart of the Midwest. The firm needed to transition from a legacy forecasting system to new CPM technology. The forecasting system was mission critical and drove forecasts in excess of $700 million dollars in demand.FirstQuarter worked with the firm to design, develop, and deploy a new forecasting system using multi-dimensional OLAP technology in concert with Microsoft Excel. In addition to developing a custom user interface, FirstQuarter also developed an interface between the new forecasting system and the firm’s Oracle MRP system. This was a significant aspect of the project which greatly streamlined as-is vs. to-be processes.
Key Benefits
The final system design facilitated the following key benefits:- Brought greater discipline in the forecasting process
- Provided transparency in calculations that allowed forecasters to have greater confidence in the transaction flows through the system.
- Allowed for increased flexibility to handle changes to product codes
- Enabled archival of official forecasts thereby allowing comparison of prior forecasts to actual results
- Streamlined key processes related to the Oracle MRP interface