January, 2000 - Bristol-Myers Squibb/Philippines, which recently installed a 25-user site license for the Commercial edition of SmartForecasts Version 5, reports that the software is being welcomed across departments.

According to Vice President, MRP II Rey Lacson, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Philippines is using SmartForecasts Commercial to help forecast monthly inventory movements across the entire supply chain, from factory to wholesalers/distributors, to retail outlets, to consumers. The resulting direct sales forecast is used to calculate the master production schedule for the factory. In addition, marketing is using SmartForecasts to project "in-market" sales 18 months into the future, while sales is forecasting the sales plan for the next four months.

"It is not unusual for product managers to generate forecasts using three different forecasting methods before incorporating forecast adjustments attributed to market and competitive information, management objectives and informed judgment. Generating three separate forecasts for any brand 18 months into the future would have been unthinkable without SmartForecasts," noted Lacson.

"More than a month ago, I had a two-day session to demonstrate (SmartForecasts Version 5)," said Lacson. "I found it quite easy to demonstrate its various features, which generated much appreciation from the product managers. The ability to do historical and forecast adjustments, promotion and event modeling, batch interactive forecasting, and forecast (trend) hedging and to ignore "leading zeros" in the sales history are just a few of the features that drew "oohs" and "ahhs" from the group.

"They found SmartForecasts' speed unbelievable. At one point I jokingly cautioned them not to blink an eye because they might miss something while SmartForecasts displayed the results of a forecast calculation. The interaction between graphs and spreadsheet screens is just fantastic.

"In the future, SmartForecasts will allow our people to work in a networking mode. Imagine having a group of people in charge of different company brands doing their forecasting and immediately seeing the results of their individual forecasts on the company's overall demand forecast. It will make "what-if" analysis possible for whole product lines and business segments.

"SmartForecasts will remain a big help to everyone involved in the company's supply chain management. The truth is, we have not really exhausted all the possibilities in using this powerful software."

In selecting SmartForecasts as its forecasting standard, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Philippines joins Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia, Thailand and Malaysia.

SmartForecasts Version 5 is the latest release of Smart Software's SmartForecasts for Windows demand forecasting software. Its groundbreaking new features include enhanced database connectivity, including direct access to major client/server databases such as Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server; new Automatic Trend Hedging for new and aging product forecasting; enhanced promotional modeling that allows the assignment of unique promotional scenarios for each SKU in a user's database; full Microsoft Excel 97/2000 support; and an optional Intermittent Demand Forecasting module to forecast sales and manage inventory for product demand that is intermittent, i.e., demand that is irregular with a large proportion of zero values. Besides the Commercial edition, SmartForecasts is also available in Professional and Enterprise editions.

Smart Software has been a leader in the forecasting software market since 1984, with thousands of installations worldwide. Customers include small, medium-size and Fortune 500 firms, such as Mead Corporation, Labatt Breweries, Abbott Laboratories and Pfizer International.