Avercast

Avantages

Avercast can be customized as per organization's needs and serves as one-stop solution for efficient Supply Chain. With thousands of fast moving SKUs we are able to manage the forecasting and planning in literally minutes with customized reports. What really makes a business different, apart from functionalities, is the service it provides to it's customers and the value it adds. As a customer, working with Avercast for over a year, we have been extremely satisfied with the service and state-of-the-art functionalities which the software brings along.

Inconvénients

I would like to see an increase in the frequency of online webinars they currently hold, which not only encourages us to share best practices, with other organizations, but also acts as a medium to adapt to one.

Avantages

Avercast gives you the ability to make forecast plans and events on several levels. It allows you to not only plan demand at the SKU level, it has the ability to roll that demand up to different levels, allowing you to get a high level view of the total demand and overall trends. The built in forecasting methods are a covenant when you want to automate some of your forecasting. The data extract and import modules are very convenient when you are maintaining your items, or updating a large number of forecasts at one time. The program overall has helped us reduce our overall inventory levels, as well as helped us gain better access and visibility into our supply and forecasting plans.

Inconvénients

Because Avercast has so many built in fuctions, and the Avercast team continues to improve the functionality of the program, one of the difficulties that we see are, whenever there is a new version roll out there are several customizations that we have built into our version that need to be rewritten and rebuilt into our new versions in order for our program to run correctly again.

Although the use of built in forecasting methods makes forecasting convienant, it is often difficult to know which forecasting algorithms are being applied to the forecast and what data they are being derived from. It would be nice if Avercast gave you an idea of what forecasting methods are being applied and how to interpret the out put of those forecasting algorithms.

Avantages

Easy to use & to review the data, exporting of data is also user friendly.Easy to view inventory by category, by dollar , by group

Inconvénients

Not that easy to make adjustments & keep the adjustments

Avantages

Flexibility, customer service, openness and follow through to develop enhancements, consistent and easy implementation, quick ROI

Inconvénients

I have little to no complaints, this should be a software solution that is on everyone's list when considering purchasing a demand planning software system.

Avantages

We have been using Avercast for 4-5 years now, and the improvements from our old methods to this have been very noticeable.

Given the wide range of algorithms the system uses and not to mention the ease of use, whether you are a roll-up or top-down planning company, Avercast adapts to your business needs. More importantly, because of Avercast our team is allowed to focus our time on outliers in the system. When you are a very SKU intense organization like we are, time management is everything.

I think the biggest gain with Avercast though is the customer support you receive with the software. There's no helpdesk email or portal system. We simply call the office and speak right with their developers; a huge win in our opinion.

Inconvénients

The only thing that needs improvement, in our opinion is the user interface. With Avercast being an SQL based program, it still resembles one on the front end. Given the enhancements in technology each day, it would be great to see the Avercast software get a new face lift.

Don't be fooled though. The dated design in no way reflects the capabilities of the calculations and processes that the software uses. We don't care how dated the front end looks as long as the information is accurate and correct.

Avantages

Avercast makes planning so easy. Because they can have it work with my system, I can easily integrate it and use it in many ways. I loved how easy it was to get to the data and use it with Business intelligence. It allowed us to manage our Sales and Operations in a way that was out of this world. Most importantly, they take care of us. If we had questions or needed help they were right there. They are a classy team that treat you like family.

Inconvénients

I was really hoping they would work to make entering forecasts by sales reps easier. I believe they are coming out or have come out with a solution.

Avantages

The support of the team is phenomenal. The guys who actually code and build the product are the ones giving the support. Over time, they get to understand how you use the software and are able to give context to issues or questions you may have.

Inconvénients

There is a learning curve in understanding the different areas in where to make forecasting and analysis decisions. We've remedied this with internal work instructions for how we use the Avercast forecasting software as a business.

Avantages

Ease of use is important, great results are more important. We get them both with Avercast. Outstanding support is another feature that makes this a smart choice. It something needs tweaking to better serve your business, they are there to get it done quickly. No SOW, no exhorbitatant fees, just excellent service and results.

Inconvénients

I wish there was another dimension available for safety stock that focused on variability to compliment the magnitude aspect of stratifying items into ABC. A variable A item should have higher SS than a predictable one...having this analysis would add another level of refinement to inventory planning.

Avantages

it's pretty malleable, has most of what we need given our sku range and has some nifty bells and whistles

Inconvénients

I like excel so may not be a con so much but once the forecast reviews are done we basically do all our ordering through a taylored excel download. A lot of the detail we don't house in our AX system couldn't be house in Avercast so we're patching information from excel templates, not terrible but extra steps

Avantages

Forecast algorithms! Visual graphs and different choices for graphs. Customer support and hands on approach by the entire Avercast team!

Inconvénients

Integrating it with D3FO. Response time to getting it integrated was slow for awhile, but the team has picked up the pace these past few months and things are moving along now. But I am still worried how Avercast will push forecasts through to D3FO because I have been unable to do so.

Avantages

The History and Comparison info is very easy view. Easy access to get your own reports using Data Extract.

Inconvénients

I really have no complaints. Maybe to be able to filter out customer orders by status to see released or on holds summary quantities.

Avantages

I like that the Avercast is fast. It doesn't take too long to run reports and review our items on Summary Forecast. The "Flag Action Messages With" section quickly shows what needs attention.

Inconvénients

I would like to see if there is a way to have list of all the tables that could be pulled from Data Extract with each table's corresponding columns.

Avantages

We can consult a lot of reports in order to know the inventory status inluding all the open POs, for example if we need to expedite or delay some items, that's is so helpful for us to avoid lost sales.
Also, every week we have a suggested replenishment according to the inventory in our warehouse, is easier for us to know how many qty to buy of each item.

Inconvénients

At this time everything goes good for us, the use of this software is easy and the reports that we have are good for us.

Avantages

Being able to run difference forecast modules simultaneously. The ease of producing pipeline with a click .

Inconvénients

You have to wait to the system updates to see forecast changes and any pipelines or open to buys or any reports for that matter will be inaccurate untll that point.

Avantages

The forecasting methods. I've had great success with the robust forecasting methods. I also like the ability to review and set forecast across different levels of detail.

Inconvénients

There is a learning curve, some of my users have a difficult navigating the menu. The look and feel of the software is outdated.

Avantages

Ease of use and integration with our business systems is a great strength. The data mapping was painless, and we were able to get value from the product more or less immediately

Inconvénients

Nothing - great product. We have been amazed at the ease of use, and I can't really say a bad word about the product.