Promax PX allows multiple plans to be held within the system.

Sales Plan – This is a combination of the baseline forecast and the promotional forecast.

Budget Plan – Promax PX has fully integrated budgeting functionality and allows for the creation and revision Account / SKU budgets. Budgets can be created using the Strategy Planning environment, generated from forecast data & past promotional history or can be imported from an external system.

Speculation Plan – Promax PX has a What-If scenario modelling environment (Strategy Planner) where a variety of scenarios can be generated to model changes in promotional frequency, promotional price points, cost of goods, trading terms, shelf / list prices & distribution costs.

Statistical Plan – The Promax PX statistical modelling engine is used to define both the baseline and promotional volumes that are used within all planning areas of the solution. Promax PX will store the statistical forecast separately so that an analysis of the statistical forecast vs manual overwrites can be performed.

Constrained Plan & Supply Chain Constrained plan – Promax PX does not hold a constrained plan or a supply chain constrained plan within the system

Constrained Plan & Supply Chain Constrained Plan – the Promax AnaltyX module will allow Simplot to record the constrained plans of the business and compare these to the current sales plans. Usually the development of the constrained plan is carried out in a SCP solution (like i2) and considers factors such as raw material availability, production capacities etc. This information can be imported into Promax.

The underlying principal of this approach is continuous improvement through a robust S&OP process that allows the business to firstly identify the best cases for both demand and supply. Where there is a gap then strategies and actions are put into place. For instance – if demand cannot be met then account managers are notified and promotions may be scaled down or dropped. Alternatively, if supply exceeds demand then additional promotions or greater discounts may be offered to increase demand and therefore reduce any over supplies.

Promax PX allows the user to analyse data at any level of aggregation or disaggregation across the Product and Account Hierarchies. All forecast information within Promax PX is held by Planning Account and SKU by Week. This allows reports to be run across;

• Market dimension – By Business unit, Channel, region and/or customer
• Time dimension – By years, months, weeks
• Production dimension – By family, group and/or products
• Geography – By shipment warehouse state (e.g. ‘DC’)

In the instances where Promax PX is configured to run on a Pure Calendar setting there are situations where the weeks within a month are not whole, for example 4.2 weeks within a month. Promax PX automatically apportions the volume across the required number of days to ensure that the volume is captured accurately within the reporting month.

Promax provides a full range of forecast accuracy measures including +/- Error and MAPE and these can be reported in both Volume and Value terms. Reports such as the Waterfall (Slantt Chart) featured in Promax PX provide a very useful track of accuracy over time and show the impact with relation to lead-times.

Can Promax generate value from forecast – ability to capture base invoice cost and promotional invoice cost

Promax PX is able to hold Forecasts and Sales history at both the Cases and Units as a base level. Promax PX holds information on:

• Units Per Case
• Standard Cost / COGS
• List Price
• Case Weight / Litre (Gross & Net)

Using this information combined with the cost of trade spend related activity Promax PX is able to give both a Gross Sales & Net Sales Forecast. The Promax PX database holds both the forecast and actual sales information allowing a closing a position (Outlook) for the financial period to be calculated. Promax AnalytX BI (OLAP Data Cube) allows any number of calculations to be performed using these measures providing limitless configurability and customisation for review & forecast reporting.

Can the forecast uplift be based on either DC selling out data or Customer EPOS data, a mixed environment depending on the customer?

Uplifts and baselines can be generated on any combination of:

• Average Sales
• Average Scan (EPOS)
• Base Scan (EPOS)
• User Defined
• Statistical
• Increase / Decrease a baseline forecast derived by the above calculation methods by a Percentage
• Import an external baseline.

The basis of statistical modelling in Promax PX is to understand the historical promotional uplift associated with pricing and other causal activities at the consumption end of the supply chain. Promax can import point-of-sale data and use it as the basis of statistical modelling. These statistical models can then be applied in promotion planning and predict the effect of price point and other similar mechanics on future promotional volume and trade spend.