Whether you are forecasting for marketing, finance or manufacturing, Forecast Pro is the ideal solution--simple enough for beginners, but with all the power needed by experts. Forecast Pro is the best selling and best regarded forecasting software in the industry.
Benefits
Easy to use
The software guides you through the entire forecasting process. No knowledge of statistics or forecasting is required--ForecastPro's expert selection mode can help you apply the best forecasting method for your data.
Highly accurate forecasts.
Forecast Pro's automated expert selection recently outperformed 18 of 19 teams made up of forecasting experts from the world's leading business schools. In the same study of over 3,000 test forecasts, it outperformed all other forecasting software packages. Expert selection automatically uses rule based logic and tests using "out of sample tests" to select the best method.
Built-in forecasting expertise.
Forecast Pro automatically helps you select the best technique from five classes of forecasting methods appropriate for a wide variety of business needs. Use expert selection to automatically choose a model or select your own for the following methods:
- 12 different exponential smoothing models using the Holt Winters family, including trend and seasonal patterns.
- Seasonal Simplification substantially increases accuracy of forecasts when historic data contains more than 12 observations per year.
- A multiplicative, seasonal Box Jenkins model for stable data sets--can be built automatically or interactively.
- Multiple Level models are used to produce forecasts for groups of variables within a hierarchy such as geographic areas or situations where multiple brands, product lines and products are tracked. ForecastPro takes data from each element in the hierarchy and forecasts all the series.
- Event Models extend exponential smoothing to account for irregular occurences such as promotions, holidays, strikes, business interruptions or other irregular events
- Low volume/sparse data models such as Croston’s Intermittent Demand model when series has a lot of zero data or discrete models when data consists of low integers
- Simple Methods like moving averages for very short or volatile data
- 4 types of curve fitting methods: straight line, quadratic, exponential and growth
Forecast Pro Unlimited has enterprise-level forecasting capacity
You can forecast hundreds or thousands of items at the same time.
Quick results.
A benchmark forecast of 10,000 individual forecasts with 3 years of monthly data per item took only 3 minutes 24 seconds on a 600 MHz Pentium III with 128 MB of RAM.
Judgement and Collaboration functions
Override and adjust forecasts, make comments and share data with others.
Link your forecasts to your existing business data.
Forecast Pro can import data from spreadsheets, text files or any ODBC source (e.g. Access, Oracle, SQL Server). Outputting data to the same sources is just as easy.
Diagnose and test your models.
For those with a statistical background, Forecast Pro's diagnostic tools help you optimize your forecasts using a variety of tools:
- Diagnostic Statistics such as Sample Size, Number of parameters, Mean, Standard Deviation, R-square, Adjusted R-square, Durbin-Watson, Ljung-Box test, Forecast error, Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), Mean absolute percentage error, Root mean squared error and mean absolute deviation.
- Compare and evaluate models graphically using graphs of the residuals and error autocorrelation function.
- Test your model using out of sample testing. Select and withhold a sample of data at the end of your data set to test the performance of your model on.
Adjust your forecasts and present them.
Forecast Pro lets you easily adjust points, ranges or totals on your forecasts directly on the graph or within a spreadsheet interface.
Automatically create presentation quality forecast reports
4 standard reports plus custom reporting options. Include a graph, historic data, confidence limits and more. Output your report to a spreadsheet, ASCII or any ODBC database.
Free Support and Program Updates for 1 Year.
A 1-year support contract is included at no additional cost including unlimited technical support, program updates and new releases. This can be renewed in future years for an annual fee (the current support contract cost is $750 per user for 1 year).
Click here for a comparison between the 3 ForecastPro versions.
Discounts are available for academic institutions.
Reviews/Testimonials
PC Week: "Indispensable!. . .for any company whose future depends on numbers, Forecast Pro is arguably the only application one needs to justify buying a computer." "Forecast Pro automates every possible aspect of analysis and prediction."
PC Magazine-Editor's Choice: "Anyone needing to forecast trends--especially those without enough background to use the powerful but more involved tools in statistical powerhouses, such as SPSS--will want to place Forecast Pro high on the list of must-have software."
Info World: "Business Forecast Systems puts an end to the forecasting dilemma. . .Its accuracy and broad support for various statistical models earned it our top score of Excellent."
Byte - Best Overall Award: "Forecast Pro strikes an optimal mix between the ease-of-use features that a novice forecaster seeks and the power and flexibility an experienced forecaster requires."
PC World - Highest Rated: "Forecast Pro achieves a good balance between automatic forecasting and user involvement...It produces the best forecasts overall and prepares the best reports."
Industry Week: "Even people without backgrounds in statistics or economics can use the system to develop more accurate forecasts -- even large-scale forecasts involving thousands of items."
Craig Divine, Pacific Bell: "Forecast Pro has increased my productivity way beyond my expectations!"
David Shroyer, Robert Mondavi Winery: "Forecast Pro is fast, flexible and easy to use. We love it!"
Bruce Harned, Owens-Corning: "A tremendous tool. Forecast Pro makes it easy for us to get the information we need accurately and consistently."
Forecast Pro customers include over 25,000 small and large companies and organizations across every major industry including 3M, A.C. Nielsen, Amazon.com, AT&T, Bristol Myers Squibb Company, Canon USA, Capital One Financial, Chevron, Chrysler, CocaCola, Dell, Deloitte & Touche, Dow Chemical, Dupont, Eastman Kodak, ExxonMobil, Federal Express, Fidelity Investments, Ford Motor Company, Gilette, Glaxo SmithKline, Harvard University, HP, IBM, Intel, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg, Kraft Foods, Levi Strauss, Lucent, Lufthansa, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Merck, Merril Lynch, Monsanto, Nabisco, Nestle, Nortel, Office Depot, Owens Corning, Pennzoil, Pfizer, Pilsbury, Polaroid, Procter & Gamble, Qwest Communications, Ralston Purina, Saab, Seagram and Sons, Sherwin Williams, Siemens, Sprint, T-Mobile USA, Toys R Us, US Postal Service, Unilever Bestfoods, UPS, Verizon, Walmart and Xerox.
Technical Specifications
Forecast Pro is a 32-bit program that runs under all current Windows platforms. Forecast Pro requires a minimum of 64 MB of RAM and 30 MB of hard disk space. With such modest hardware requirements, Forecast Pro can run on virtually any Windows-based computer!
Forecast Pro Unlimited - Full License
Includes all functions described above
Forecast Pro Unlimited - Collaborator License
If someone else in your organization has a Forecast Pro Unlimited - Full License, then you can add one or more Collaborator licenses to view their forecast files (including historical data, forecasts and adjustments). You can also add judgments, comments and overrides to the original forecast. The Collaborator license allows another user to be involved in adding input to a forecast at a much lower cost than a full license.