A forecast nobody trusts, so every team keeps its own
One forecast per SKU with its range and its reasons, turned into reorder and allocation decisions a planner signs.
What goes wrong today
Sales builds one number, finance another and the plant a third.
Each team pads its own buffer, because nobody can see how the official forecast was made. The weekly plan is rebuilt in spreadsheets and is out of date by the time it is shared.
The cost shows up twice. Before a festival or a promotion, materials and co-packer capacity are booked late and paid for at a premium. After it, the stock ordered to be safe sits in depots and ties up cash.
Why existing approaches fall short
- Spreadsheets hold the sales history, along with the duplicate SKUs, mixed units and gaps that quietly skew every forecast built on it.
- ERP planning runs on fixed lead times and min/max levels that nobody revisits when demand shifts.
- Most forecasting tools give one number with no range and no record of who changed it or why, so overrides are never checked against what happened.
How FLX4 addresses it
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FLX4 starts with the history. It flags duplicate SKUs, mixed units, outliers and date gaps, and the planner chooses which fixes to apply. It then forecasts each SKU with the statistical model that had the lowest back-tested error, and shows a low, likely and high range with trend and seasonality broken out.
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Calendar effects are explicit. Indian festivals and your own past promotions adjust the forecast, and each adjustment records where its uplift came from. The plan then becomes supply decisions: safety stock, a reorder point and an order rounded to MOQ, plus an order-by date for each festival given the supplier lead time. Where volume is split across plants or co-packers, OpsNest allocates it within MOQ, truck-fill, changeover and capacity limits.
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PlanningNest runs the forecast and the supply maths, and OpsNest runs the allocation. Nothing is written to your ERP without a named approver.
The loop, step by step
- 1 · Predict
Clean the history
Detectors flag duplicate SKUs, mixed units, outliers and gaps. The planner picks which fixes to apply, and each one is logged.
- 2 · Predict
Forecast with a range
Each SKU gets the model with the lowest back-tested error, a low, likely and high range, and festival and promotion uplifts that name their source.
- 3 · Decide
Turn demand into supply
Safety stock, reorder point and an MOQ-rounded order per SKU, an order-by date per festival, and a split of volume across plants or co-packers.
- 4 · Approve
The planner signs the number
Overrides need a reason and keep the original figure. The procurement head approves each allocation run before any purchase order is drafted.
- 5 · Execute
Hand off the plan
Approved allocations become draft POs in OpsNest. Forecasts export to Excel, and direct write-back to your ERP is configured per deployment.
- 6 · Learn
Score every forecast
Actuals are recorded against each plan version, and error and bias are tracked per contributor, so the team learns whose adjustments help.
What it helps you work toward
Outcomes are measured against a baseline we agree with you in writing.
Forecast error you can see
MAPE and bias by SKU class and by contributor, against the pre-pilot baseline
Fewer late festival buys
Purchase orders raised after the order-by date, per festival window
Overrides with a reason
Share of SKUs adjusted by hand, with the reason recorded for each change
Allocations that respect the truck and the MOQ
Truck fill and sub-MOQ lines in each approved allocation run
What powers this solution
PlanningNest
Order the right quantity before the festival, and know why the number is what it is.
Explore PlanningNest →
OpsNest
When a line stops or a vendor slips, the plan and the POs keep up.
Explore OpsNest →
Stocki
Know what your stock costs you each month, and keep the right stock in the right place.
Explore Stocki →Integrations
Sales history and the weekly master production schedule load from CSV or Excel. ERP connectors (e.g. Tally, SAP Business One, SAP S/4HANA) are configured per deployment. Forecasts export to Excel. Nothing writes back to your ERP without approval.
Bring us the decision behind this problem
In two weeks: the decision mapped, where money leaks, a baseline agreed in writing and a ninety-day plan with one target.
Read-only on day one. Your people approve every action. If the number does not move, you do not scale.