Company Slacker

A little background….

My company has never taken sales forecasting seriously. When I took over 5 years or so ago, the only software we had was E/step Software’s shameful FGS which we got ‘free’ from our parent company when they dumped it. I spent most of my time engineering around it where possible and where not, automating most functions.

Last year, the worldwide group decided to buy a global system. They selected representatives from each country (none of them forecasters) and selected the best presented system – Manugistics. They then proceeded to configure it in such a way as to make it worthless. They didn’t even integrate the various countries – so we can’t share data. Now how stupid is that? Get’s worse! They only allowed a single model, multiple linear regression in weekly buckets but without any causal variables. The forecasts are horrendous!

After months of frustration I told my boss that I’d have to leave the company as this software performed worse than FGS (though not as difficult to use) and relegated the demand planner to database maintenance. Eventually, my vocal objections to the software earned me a label of ‘bad attitude’.

Then something wonderful happened. The inventory got so high and service so low that I was able to get the XE version of ForecastPro, the darling of the M3 competition, as a pilot for replacement of Manugistics Demand. This version has not database backend and is limited to 100 SKUs but from a professional standpoint it’s well worth the effort.

I’ve got mad skills with MS Access and office automation and I am a decent forecaster. Problem I have is that there is nobody else in the company whom I can talk to about anything that I do. My boss is clueless and co-workers have a techincal IQ of near zero. Not that they are stupid but they are content to use only the tools given to them.

OK, let’s get started.