Retail Forecast is developed by LS Retail and consists of a cloud-based demand forecasting engine and additional functionality in LS Central for setup, data upload/download, and for utilizing the downloaded forecast in Replenishment. LS Insight is used as data hub to store the uploaded sales history.
The cloud-based part of Retail Forecast is built on Microsoft's Cortana Intelligence Suite and uses advanced statistical forecasting techniques, such as ARIMA, Seasonal ARIMA, Additive, and Multiplicative models to predict future sales demand from sales history with a best-fit approach.
In LS Central, Retail Forecast is also used as a Replenishment Calculation Type. The forecast results lets users anticipate demand better in Replenishment, so that they can accurately determine what items to order and when to order them.
Retail Forecast allows calculation of forecasts on a daily or weekly granularity for different item groups. While users might want to utilize the highest precision for their priority one items, a forecast on a weekly level can be sufficient for spare parts and lower priority items.
It is possible to calculate Safety Stock quantities based on volatility in the sales data, the system computes a forecast quality KPI and rates each forecast within three quality categories (good, medium, or poor), so you can quickly evaluate its reliability.