Before! Multi-paradigma predictive platform   • buying.     • stores replenishment. • promotional effects. • simulation analysis of prices and promotions. • commercial decisions testing. • transportation and distribution. • energy and risk management.

ACT Operations Research is proud to open the doors to one of its most full-fledged forecasting and demand analysis system: managers and analysts can now rely on accurate short, medium and long term promotion and price setting outcomes forecasts.
Made possible by several years of focused R&D teamwork, Before! empowers forecasting while drastically reducing both the time to draw up well-rounded models as well as its integration and maintenance costs.  
ACT Operations Research BEFORE! Predictive Analytics invokes embedded intelligent models continuously learning the behaviour of  forces like i.e., seasonality, trends, weather and cross influences while improving their accuracy without human intervention.
With Before! suite you improve the capability to forecast while gaining excellent control of the related processes such as i.e., planning, buying and inventory management.

Before! flexibility comes out with a range of powerful modules that includes functionalities such as efficiency analysis for promotion, assortment and display decisions.

Benefits encompass lower inventory stock costs, higher service levels and stock-out cuts.

Whether you are up for inventory or procurement optimization, store level replenishment, or marketing predictive analysis, Before! enable optimal management with accurate forecast.
Before! Predictive Analytics includes two modules:
1. Before! Forecasting predicts the demand at aggregate level as well as at store-item level, considering multiple variables affecting the demand (holiday, meteo, price, etc).
2. Before! Promo Forecasting predicts the demand for future promotion events associated with temporary price reductions and/or media and advertising pressure.

Usage model

Whether you wish to know your sales before they occur, taking decisions on your supply network or you are a retailer looking to break down your sales forecasts by SKU and store, Before! can help!

Before! Forecasting
Are your planning and operational projections being threatened by multiple events (e.g., holidays), many variables (e.g., meteo), cross effects (cannibalization and halo), and very large data sets? Whether it is deployed as an engine or as on-premise/Web-service application, Before! Forecasting identifies accurate sales trend while giving you the how’s and why’s of the expected process outcomes.

Before! Promo Forecasting
Whether you are a CPG manufacturing company highly investing in trade promotion for hundreds of products, a very-well positioned retailer in high-traffic areas with moderate promotional needs or a traditional store generating traffic with a considerable spend on advertising and promotion for thousands of items, Before! Promo Forecasting helps to select the best categories and items to promote while providing you with a near accurate prediction for the outcome of promotional discounts. Before! Promo Forecasting helps you both targeting increase in gross margin impact and in sales uplift per product category and brand while understanding cross-product effects such as cannibalization or the opposite halo.

Used as daily operational tool to forecast demand and promotional sales, for restocking, planning as well as to assist strategic decisions in the commercial area (e.g. price, promo, display/assortment and space optimization) through what-if analysis, BEFORE! Predictive Analytics can be coupled with other ACT Operations Research’ products such as BEFORE! Market Analytics (Marketing and Sales),  OPT Shipping (distribution planning), ARENA and SIMIO (discrete event simulation). ACT Operations Research BEFORE! Predictive Analytics integration capabilities make integration easy with ERP and other systems already installed.

Main functionalities

Goals

• Sales forecasting broken down per SKU, geo-area
  

• Promotional sales forecasting
  

• What-if analysis through prices and promotions
  

• Flows forecasting (e.g., customers queues, call center calls, traffic)

• Add-on: module for promotional and assortment efficiency.
  

Variables of influence:

• Weather
  

• Regular price
  

• Promotional price

• Brand.
  

Peculiarities:

• Forecasting accuracy
  

• Forecasting disturbance effects from a range of factors
  

• Seasonality details (e.g. yearly, monthly, weekly)
  

• Automatic math-model picking
  

• Powerful computation performance.

• If you have million of statistical series, ACT Operations Research Before! can help!
  

• ACT Operations Research Before! is tailored for short-life cycle products encompassing a number of verticals.

Main features and add-ons

• Scheduling system for automated forecasts generation

• Automated system performance monitoring
  

• On-premise or data service implementation in the “cloud”

• Can be integrated with existing IT applications
  
• Fast activation, fast return-on-investment (ROI).
  

Vertical markets

• Retail (e.g. fashion) and distribution
  

• Consumer product goods manufacturing
  

• Utilities and Energy

ACT Operations Research technology integration and scalability

• SaaS and on-premise
  

• developed through Java technology
  

• integrates with any SQL database compliant
  

• integrates with ERP, TMS, WMS
  

• a very powerful engine designed for parallel calculus
  

• scalable for a number of CPUs and cloud architectures

Contact us @ for more information on ACT Operations Research BEFORE! Suite