Forecast Manager is designed to manage and streamline the budget forecasting, analysis and reporting process. By bringing forecast, sales and weather data into a single integrated application, you can streamline processes for monthly forecast variance and analysis reporting.
Forecast Manager allows you to weather-normalize sales, track sales trends by rate and revenue class, explain sales variance, generate forecast and weather reports, and update year-end budget forecasts. With Forecast Manager, you can identify sales trends and evaluate forecast performance long before there is a problem.
The foundation of Forecast Manager is a Microsoft® SQL Server relational database that stores sales, customer and revenue data; weather data; calendar month forecast and weather normal sales. Forecast drivers such as economic and demographic projections, as well as end-use saturation and efficiency trends are generally stored in external Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Microsoft Access databases. The system also provides customizable reports and the ability to export forecasts to Excel and integrate with a variety of other spreadsheet and database formats.
When you use Forecast Manager, you can:
Automate and maintain sales, customer, and weather databases.
Track and edit sales and customer data by rate class and revenue class across a single or multiple companies.
Calculate and report cycle-weighted and calendar-month weather concepts for a single or multiple weather stations.
Archive and evaluate multiple forecast scenarios.
Weather-normalize sales and generate monthly variance reports.
Generate customized weather and sales forecast reports.
Export data and forecasts to Microsoft Excel or text file format.
Accurate forecasts and streamlined operations can provide a quick payback on your investment, so why wait? For more information about Forecast Manager or to discuss your forecasting needs, contact the Itron Forecasting group directly at (800) 755-9585 or forecasting@itron.com. Be sure to attend one of the upcoming forecasting workshops or free brown bag seminars.
