What is Prophecy?
Prophecy™ is a proven, easy to use Windows solution for demand forecasting and analysis. Use class-leading statistical and machine learning automatic and expert mode sales forecasting. Combine with forecaster event knowledge and judgement. Instantly understand the financial impact of your forecasts with real-time expansions to revenue, margin, kgs etc., over hierarchies of products and customers, for multiple, concurrent forecasters. Minimise training costs with Prophecy's Microsoft Office style interface.
How will it help?
Capture your forecasters’ business knowledge and foresight. Combine it with leading-edge statistical forecasts. Extend to revenue and profit in real time.
Built for sharing across business functions.
One set of numbers to power your company's vision of the future!
Insights, not numbers...
Forecast, analyse and report on demand forecasts versus previous year, budgets, targets and what-if scenarios. Identify and react to exceptions and trends earlier. Forecast, analyse, review, extract, monitor and control within a single, easy to use solution. Optional Trade Promotions Planning module.
Multi-level forecasting...
.. over hierarchies of products and customers. Forecast, review, measure forecast accuracy for volumes, revenues, profit etc. at any level of product and customer.
Compare versus recent running rates, previous years, budgets etc. instantly within Prophecy.
Track forecasting accuracy
.. with a few clicks. Supports standard forecast accuracy measures. Analyse any combination of product and customer, any measure, any horizon. Learn from forecast errors, earlier. Prophecy's forecasting accuracy reports provide both the detail and the summary level accuracy statistics.
Beyond spreadsheets
Choose a purpose built demand forecasting solution to increase user productivity / reduce errors versus Excel demand forecasting solutions. Spot mistakes or trends earlier. Eliminate all manual data loading to focus on activities that directly improve forecasting accuracy. Produce defensible forecasts, quickly and effectively.
For BUSINESS forecasters!
Easy to use, but with all the functionality needed for successful demand forecasting.
Prophecy's Benefits
Forecast with the right methodology
Use Prophecy™ if you're forecasting with:
- Frequent and highly variable promotional activity.
- Active competitors, with equally frequent and variable promotional activity.
- Promotions which are (intentionally) different each time
- Promotions which occur at different times each year.
- Major customers represent a high proportion of total sales.
Prophecy™ helps forecasters interpret and understand the factors that statistical algorithms struggle with. It helps the forecaster analyse the data in a variety of intuitive, graphical and insightful ways, detecting forecasting errors early.
Prophecy also features an optional Trade Promotion Planning module, which allows itemised promotions to be planned, modelled, approved and evaluated.
Aimed at the right users
Prophecy™ is for front-line business demand forecasters. It helps them productively apply their specialised knowledge and judgement to the demand forecasts. All within an easy-to-use, Excel type experience. However, Prophecy™ goes way beyond Excel in its specialist statistical forecasting, analytic and reporting features.
Prophecy™ delivers a 'live' view of detailed volume forecasts expanded through revenue, profit and any other measures you define (such as kgs, litres etc.). It consolidates all measures in real time over multi-level hierarchies of products and customers.
The forecasted measures in your Prophecy™ system are completely customisable. Start with volume, extend to revenue and margin, compare with budgets, plans, other versions.
Integrate demand forecasting into core processes
Prophecy™ offers you much more than just volume demand forecasting.
Standard costs and selling prices are pre-imported into the database (or prices and discounts can be modelled manually).
The revenue and profit impact of volume and pricing changes are instantly rolled up, in real time, over a complete hierarchy of products and customers.
Prophecy fully supports 'forecast / review / re-forecast / publish' workflow.
Analyse and risk-assess forecasts within Prophecy™, at any hierarchy level for volume, revenue, profit or any other forecasted measure.
Track forecast vs. Plan, Last Year, Last Version...
Prophecy™ delivers control, visibility, tracking and sharing of the demand forecast. Escape the 'many versions of the truth', bloat and data fragmentation issues associated with Excel demand forecasting spreadsheets.
Forecast, analyse, compare with budgets, prior years or previous forecasts - for volume, revenue, profit or any other measure. All within Prophecy's easy to use, multi-dimensional views and graphs.
Capture and audit every forecast change in the Prophecy Tracking database - date, time, who made the change etc..
Measure Forecast Accuracy
Forecast accuracy analysis is important because:
- Forecasters will learn from forecasting errors and avoid repeating the same mistakes.
- Management will spot which forecasts need reviewing, earlier.
- Forecast accuracy stays 'front of mind' for forecasters when it is easily visible to managers.
Accuracy analysis is hard to deliver in fixed-view demand forecasting spreadsheets. Prophecy™ gives you accuracy measurement at any level of hierarchy and over any time horizon, for any measure.
Summary demand forecast accuracy measures such as MAPE, MAD, two types of weighted average, bias and over/under frequency distributions.
Prophecy quantifies the added value from judgemental forecasting by comparing the published forecast with the statistical forecast that would have been generated using the available sales history. Here is a sample forecast accuracy report.
Technical Benefits
Prophecy™ is quick and easy to implement.
The client application runs on Microsoft Windows. Data is hosted in a shared Microsoft SQL Server database (on-premises or Azure) or native mode share network file. SQL Server hosting adds a significant number of powerful, extra features.
Prophecy naturally supports concurrent, multiple-user, read-write access without 'sub-cubes or spreadsheets for each forecaster. Hierarchical consolidation is real time - no waiting, ever, for the summary level data.
Read in new products, customers and sales history using stored SQL queries or delimited files using Prophecy Management Studio's write once / run many times scripts module. Scripts can be run manually or scheduled to run automatically with Windows Task Scheduler or SQL Server Agent.
Extract Prophecy forecast data via SQL queries or scripted data exports. Generate Excel versions of any Prophecy report with a couple of clicks.
After the initial implementation and set-up process, a business user with spreadsheet-level skills will be able to keep Prophecy running. Prophecy maintenance is will typically take this user no more than a couple of hours per month.
Designed for demand forecasting!
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Prophecy™ combines user-friendly demand forecasting, leading-edge statistical sales forecasting, predictive financials, trade promotions and major customer planning in a single, integrated solution.
Click image for more demand forecast software screenshots - Prophecy™ enables you to streamline your demand forecasting process, using a proven software solution. Free your forecasters from cumbersome forecasting spreadsheets.
- Implement a multi-user software solution for demand forecasting, faster and at a much lower cost than competitive solutions. Typically in less than 10 days*. (Installation, configuration and implemention via remote access or in-person.)
Top 10 Prophecy™ hilights:
- Forecast at any hierarchical level (subject to the user's Prophecy security setting).
- Get the best statistical forecast accuracy with state of the art R statistical forecasting. No statistical knowledge required using 'Expert' mode.
- Forecast, analyse, report and track products, by customer, by measure and time within a single solution. Compare with previous forecasts, years or budgets... instantly.
- Extend volume forecasts into sales revenue and margin, or any other measure you need. See the financial impact of forecast changes in the same system... instantly.
- More productive than Excel!. As easy to use as an Excel forecasting spreadsheet, but designed from the ground up for multi-user sales forecasting and demand planning.
- Productivity for forecasters beyond a collection of statistical algorithms! Prophecy™ offers many, carefully thought out forecaster aids, productivity enhancers, views and analysis screens, in addition to its leading edge statistical forecasting engine.
- Prophecy saves time, delivering full multi-user, concurrent demand forecasting, with instant, real-time consolidations, using a single, shared database.
- Implement faster, at lower cost, (typically in 10 days or less*). Low ongoing maintenance with new products, customers and actuals data loaded automatically using re-usable scripts.
- A proven solution, continuously developed over more than 20 years .
- Integrates with SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, NetSuite etc. through SQL queries or delimited text files and Prophecy Automation.
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LinkedIn profile In May 2022 Prophecy's standard 'Quick Graph' option was enhanced to show manual history overrides (though naturally this can be switched off too). Quick graphs follow the cursor cell in the Prophecy report - a great way to evaluate a forecast.
In August 2021 we added new features to our 'R Expert' forecasting options. You can now preview the forecasts within Prophecy before you commit them. You can also launch the process of R statistical forecasting in a separate, standalone process whilst continuing to use Prophecy in the foreground. Please see our detailed "What's New" page for more information.
November 2020 saw the launch of semi-automatic forecast
consumption rules. Set up this functionality to automatically adjust near-term forecasts (under forecaster control) based on
recent sales. For example, add back undersales in last
periods to next periods / subtract oversales in last periods
from next periods until oversale is 'consumed'.
We have built a flexible framework for this type of automated
adjustments.
Earlier in 2020 we added the option to manually adjust the history used as input to the automated R statistical forecast engine. This enable you to remove the effect of outlier events from the history. Manual adjustments cascade down the hierarchies in proportion to the share of the actuals. As a result, you don't have to separately adjust each sku for the same outlier. This functionality provides more control than the existing automated algorithm, albeit with forecaster overhead. Of course, both methods can be used in together, if required.
More exciting stuff coming soon!
The Prophecy Changelog contains a detailed list of all the major Prophecy enhancements.