The Lite Edition of our Microsoft® Excel® based statistics software for sales forecasting and demand planning differs from the Corporate Edition in two ways. Firstly, it can only forecast one product line or item per file and secondly, there is no automatic curve fitting for the business cycle. In Sales Controller Lite, the business cycle is adjusted manually, which takes a bit longer. However, like the Corporate Edition, monthly sales forecasts can be projected over a period of six years and you can create as many Sales Controller files as is needed, so the number of sales items that can be forecast is, in effect, limitless. If you have a large number of sales items or product lines to forecast, the Corporate Edition of Sales Controller will be a better option, as it will save you time by being able to produce forecasts in batches of ten items per file. In addition, the automatic curve fitting function is another time saving feature. All versions of Sales Controller analyse your past sales history for patterns in the data that can be projected into the future. Sales Controller extracts four components from your sales history: the trend, seasonal, cyclical and erratic events components. The trend, seasonal and cyclical components are used to build the forecast. Erratic events such as strikes, storms, machinery breakdowns, etc cannot be forecast accurately using statistics software but nevertheless shouldn't be overlooked. Sales forecasting and demand planning using any form of statistics software, simply provides a sound basis on which to add your own experience and judgement of what might happen in the future. So, for accurate sales forecasting and demand planning, Sales Controller, like all statistics software, should be used in conjunction with expert opinion (see below for more on the basic principles of sales forecasting and demand planning). Click below for more information on the Lite Edition of our increasingly popular sales forecasting and demand planning statistics software: |
