1. Question:

Why does a company need a sales forecast ?

Planning is supported with the prognosis provided by TIA A3. TIA A3 offers a monthly rolling prognosis for the next 24 months on product and product group level. Thereby market trends and critical sales volume situations can be recognized earlier and suitable measures can be undertaken (e.g. purposeful publicity campaigns). Furthermore, supply-stocks can be minimized and delivery times can be shortened, resulting in an earnings improvement.

2. Question:

What is the difference between planning and prognosis?

Planning is accomplished by coworkers in the company. For this, many years of experience are necessary and there are often huge deviating opinions, towards future sales requirements of an article in the market, in the departments such as production, sales, marketing and logistics. With the forecast architecture of TIA A3 a  high-quality prognosis is provided about the future requirements, it represents thereby a convenient discussion basis for planning.

3. Question:

Why do we still need, apart from planning in the MIS, another prognosis?

The planning modules in many merchandise information systems only offer support for the planner. Planning quantities on article level can be entered, which then can be consolidated on different levels. Often, due to the large number of articles, only product groups are planned, the total amounts will then be distributed to the articles. It often comes to false estimations at the article level because of this distribution. Some merchandise information systems additionally offer prognosis, which, are usually based on well-known mathematical procedures and often only produce insufficient results.

4. Question:

We have SAP, why do we still need another prognosis software?

Many of our customers, who use e.g. SAP R/3, Baan and other MIS, optimize their logistics chain processes with the prognosis tool TIA A3, in order to adapt procurement and production better to the market-focused requirements. TIA A3 therefore represents a convenient addition to an MIS such as SAP. In addition, the prognosis quality of TIA A3 is a crucial criteria for the management.

5. Question:

How well is the prognosis quality?

Benchmarks at different universities and surveys with companies have shown that the prognosis quality of TIA A3 is approx. 95% at the article level and it will continue to improve with matured mathematical methods and the integration of experienced figures. Users of TIA A3 only work with approx. 20% of the articles, which are filtered as critical. The remaining articles are passed on automatically to the sales disposition. Every day TIA A3 is put to the test in a practical environment, and our specialists have proven the quality of this product again and again. 

6. Question:

Which data are necessary for the creation of a prognosis?

The prognosis is provided based on historical data. For this, the incoming orders of the last 36 months will be considered, the data from the merchandise information system will be transferred over an interface into TIA A3. Every merchandise information system can be integrated.

7. Question:

Can we integrate sales planning?

Yes, the sales department has access to all sales market-relevant plan and prognosis data, as well as the current incoming orders regarding the customers, over an internet client. The individual sales coworker can see immediately, on the basis of the prognosis, whether he can reach his targets. If necessary, he can suggest sales promotions, which will be converted by the marketing department. The sales director has a view of the development of the turnover and can immediately determine the current sales market situation.

8. Question:

Can marketing actions be planned?

Marketing actions can be planned and controlled with TIA A3. At the end of an action, the success of an action can be determined by means of the system by the comparison of prognosis without action and actual sales volume with action. Actions can be stored in the system for future reference.

9. Question:

How are plan deviations recognized?

The system has an automatic recognition of deviations to a given value; we talk about 'Management by Exception'. Thus critical articles are filtered automatically and the expenditure for planning are reduced substantially.

10. Question:

With what type of product can one make a prognosis?

TIA A3 is optimized for short, middle and long-lived articles.

In the trend calculation, based on clean historical data, time series analyses are developed for each article and group of articles, which provide a basis for the future sales forecast. Of course, the system determines the seasonality of the products automatically and considers it in the future. Deviations are recognized by outlier tests and historical structural breakage analysis.

The 'Extrapolation Forecast' is particularly suitable for the fashion, textile, leather and clothing industry. With this module a reliable planning instrument is at the planner's disposal for the seasonal business. At the beginning of the season, prognosis are provided with the help of analysis about market increases and market reductions due to the order conduct of regular, new and lost customers. The risk of the early disposition of low incoming orders is thereby reduced drastically and the total requirement of a collection can be determined reliably.

11. Question:

Which prognosis procedures are used?

The system uses different prognosis procedures and simultaneously supervises ans automates the quality of the results. The forecast architecture, developed by TIA, with its logical chaining, is the engine for the automated computing process. That's why the user needs no knowledge of the applied procedures. Additionally, the possibility of the alternative trend calculation with change of certain parameters exists. 

12. Question:

How are the results represented?

All incoming orders, planning and prognosis data are represented in a GUI. The tools, provided by our partner COGNOS, provide an extensive analysis and reporting method. For this, TIA offers pre-defined OLAP-cubes, which can be extended or linked with other data sources. Reference numbers can be defined and controlled daily. Thus the early recognition of deviation is ensured.

13. Question:

How do the production and purchasing offices profit from the prognosis?

With the module sales volume disposition, the range or availability for the next 52 weeks is determined, with consideration of the reorder cycle, the dynamic safety stock and the freely available inventory level. With specification of a desired range, the so-called planning horizon of the disposition, the production orders and/or order-suggestions for all inventory items of TIA A3, which are necessary for this period of time, are generated automatically. These will be further processed or booked in the second-tier PPC or MIS. 

14. Question:

Is a prognosis only available for sales volumes?

Apart from the sales volumes, appropriate turnovers are also evaluated by deposited prices. The marketing management can examine the current turnover and contribution margin situation at any time with the help of the COGNOS tools.

15. Question:

How are new articles planned?

In TIA A3 so-called reference articles can be defined for the prognosis of new phase-in articles. Additionally, a prognosis can be provided with the module ROMES for new products as well, after the first incoming orders. For this, procedures are used, which were developed particularly for this problem by TIA. The determination of so-called phase-in curves is unique. 

16. Question:

Can TIA A3 be used company-wide?

Yes, many of our customers installed TIA A3 also at their marketing companies abroad. Independent prognosis for the respective marketing areas are provided there and then the prognosis data are consolidated centrally. Thus the central planning receives a very good overview of the future sales volume of products of the foreign marketing companies. The data can be further analyzed for the management and retrieved over the internet. The management can recognize immediately whether the sales volume of a certain product or a product group goes according to plan, by means of a simple diagram. TIA A3 is available in 5 languages.

17. Question:

What is the ROI for TIA A3?

From experience we can say that it will take about 6-12 months. Just by the optimization of the inventory stocks and the associated reduction of the costs of capital lockup, a saving potential of approx. € 30.000 results,-- per year with a commodity value of 5 million €. Hereby a reduction of the store capacity of 10 % is presumed.

18. Question:

Why a prognosis software from TIA?

Many offerers of merchandise information systems only have very little experience in the area of sales forecast. TIA occupies itself with this topic for already more than 25 years and has gained appropriate experience in many projects. Well-known companies like adidas, Salomon, Stihl engine devices, UHU, Ravensburger games, Lloyd shoes and many others use TIA A3 successfully for years.