Forecasting as a Service

Insights and forecasts for process optimization and decision support

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Analytics Factory is a scalable cloud based solution designed for capturing, managing and synchronizing data from disparate systems.

Our solution enables the development and deployment of industrialized AI, advanced optimization and agile analytic solutions.

Improved forecasting speed and accuracy with Advanced Analytics and AI

 

Maximize your forecasting accuracy with Houston Analytics' purpose-built forecasting solutions paired with leading data science technologies.

Forecasts are the foundation of every advanced analytics solution. Example use cases for forecasting range across retail/online store sales, financial planning process, visitor forecasts, power consumption and resource planning. By improving the accuracy of forecasts in demand variations and spikes allows companies to better align their operations and realize significant business benefits. 

Today, most companies attempt to generate forecasts by using anything from excel spreadsheets to complex financial planning solutions. Typical legacy solutions base their forecasts on looking only at historical series of data with the assumption that the future is determined by the past. These forecasts can be greatly enhanced by combining additional variables into the forecast model and adding external data sources like location, weather, demographics, pricing, product features, competition, etc. 

 

Realize the benefits of state-of-the-art, automated forecasts without an army of data scientists and complex software

Houston Analytics' forecasting service is fully managed, meaning you don't need to buy any technical solutions or add more resources to your payroll. Houston's experts will take care of the heavy lifting of data modelling, with optimization engines and state-of-the-art machine learning running in the background.

Forecast outputs are integrated into clients' preferred end-user systems and BI tools for simple-to-use consumption. 

How it works

Houston Analytics' Forecasting as a service applies machine learning and combines time series data with additional variables to generate purpose-built, ready-to-use forecasts for process optimization and decision support. The forecasting process is customized to client-specific needs, taking full advantage of available internal and external data sources relevant to the specific forecasting requirements

Forecast as a service 2

 

With machine learning, the forecast models are  trained to find unique contextual patters using your own historical data, and over time the model learns, adapts and improves. Houston Analytics is able to complement your own data sources with external weather, competition, geographical and demographics data available from various public and 3rd party data sources. 

This allows you to optimize product and service availability across different categories and locations, decrease over/under stocking, and gain improved understanding of sales patterns and their drivers at a more detailed level.

 

Forecasting workloads for scheduling optimization

To define ideal workforce staffing levels, it's important to create an understanding of the drivers behind workforce and skills needs. 

For retail these typically include forecasts of store visitor volumes, goods flow and forecasts of sales/sales potential.

In healthcare, staffing demand variations can be affected by forecast weather, such as slipperiness which impacts accident rates. 

After identifying the right demand drivers, we can then select the optimization parameters such as maximizing profitability, minimizing overtime, or enhancing customer service availability during busy time windows.

 

 

Financial planning and budgeting

Accurate financial planning and budgeting are fundamental to every business. These tend to be very time consuming manual processes, and can be greatly enhanced with predictive analytics for improved accuracy and speed.

With the help of Houston's forecasting service, companies can enhance their financial planning and budgeting processes with accurate rolling forecasts for metrics such as revenues, profits and payroll expenses across selected time periods. 

Forecast results can be produced as flat files for to be loaded into reporting structures and consumed by financial planning systems. Results can also be visualized in interactive dashboards with clients' preferred BI tools. 

 

Product demand planning and distribution optimization

Houston's Forecasting service can be applied to product inventory forecasting and optimization down to the level of individual locations.

Forecast accuracy is improved by enriching historical sales patterns with pricing, promotions, location demographics, product features, website traffic, weather and more. 

Houston Analytics applies machine learning models and optimization engines to produce accurate forecasts for product demand by each category and individual location. These outputs can be consumed via your existing management systems. 

 

 

 

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Please drop us a note and we'll get back to you!

missions@houston-analytics.com 

 

Contact (email)

We are on a mission to industrialize analytics and power the businesses of today and tomorrow.

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contactus@houston-analytics.com

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