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March 2019 Newsletter

This quarter's QueBIT happenings, delivered straight to your inbox.

Welcome to QueBIT's Quarterly newsletter! The goal of this communication is to highlight events & technical developments, while promoting education & best practices to enhance your Analytics investment. We would love to hear your feedback on our newsletter and share any ideas you have for topics to be covered in upcoming editions.


Feature Article 

Improved forecast accuracy becomes a huge profit driver.

Most Finance teams understand and readily admit that improvements in forecast accuracy, especially at more granular levels, can deliver huge revenue and margin impacts to their organization.  The challenge is, many view these projects as being a resource-intensive commitment to achieve these goals.  Whether it be labor, capital, time, or frankly all the above, there is a general fear that these are huge undertakings.  The truth is, many of our clients see >20% accuracy improvements, in time frames ranging from a couple weeks to a couple months, while integrating directly with their existing financial planning systems in a completely automated fashion.  This is especially true for TM1/Planning Analytics clients due to the inherent flexibility of the platform.

But before we get too far discussing the upgrades, we should cover a few baseline financial benefits:

  • Improved revenue and gross margin plans – It is easy to maintain accuracy at a summarized forecasting level, but how often do organizations fall in line on revenue expectations but woefully miss profit projections? This is largely due to missing the all too common shifts in the underlying product mix within a grouping or breaking out stores within a region. Frankly, surprises in the positive or negative direction have tremendous impact on your organization, as expenses and other investments should ultimately be aligned with revenue opportunities.
  • Alignment of investment expenses – We alluded to this in the previous example, but too many organizations do not view expenses as a strategic investment, which they are. Too often, expenses are minimized as the cost of doing business, when they often serve as catalysts for growth.  Aligning your investments in labor and real estate in a growing region or aligning marketing investments with growing product lines are incredibly important.  Equally important to the alignment of these investments is the timeliness.  The more visibility organizations have into this level of detail, the more agile they can be.
  • Reduced costs associated with inventory – Direct inventory cost reductions are clear impacts of an improved forecast. Reduced carrying costs of excess inventory and freeing up space in warehouses or DCs are clear benefits, but there are other considerations like reduced pricing pressures associated with moving unproductive inventory.  Each of these costs are significant to the bottom-line, and the benefits are additive to the top-line impact of better alignment of inventory and customer demand.  The sales and customer satisfaction impact of broader coverage and increased product availability is somewhat immeasurable.

Our existing customers benefited from these improvements in the following ways:

  • 100m annual increase in gross profit
  • 20-50m reduction in waste
  • 40-60% increase in accuracy
  • 33% increase in sell-thru
  • 40% reduction in planning hours
  • 7% increase in inventory returns

Getting started is easy.  Our standard POC takes 1-2 weeks and requires minimal client involvement.  If you are interested in incorporating AI & Machine Learning into your forecasting process and deliver these benefits and more, click here to learn more about our complete predictive demand planning solution.


Podcast Podcast-[Converted]

QueBIT launched a podcast series “Ask QueBIT about Analytics” to share what we have learned with real life stories and practical advice which will help you on your analytics journey.

As a manager on the front-lines, how do you make the best decisions for your business? It helps if you have easy and immediate access to relevant data, and in a form (mobile vs desktop, image vs spreadsheet grid, etc.) that makes sense for the situation. Analytics is the science – and art – of making that happen.

Have a good analytics story that others could benefit from? Share your story on our on our next podcast? E-mail us at info@quebit.com.


Upcoming Events 

Webinar: A Deep Dive into IBM Planning Analytics Hierarchies -  Register Today!
Planning Analytics is full of new features and functionality, including the introduction of “Hierarchies.” Join us April 11th at 2pm and get the answers to your questions.


Facial expression classification solution using IBM Watson Studio -  Register Today!
Create a complete cloud-based facial expression classification solution using IBM Watson Studio, in less than 30 minutes! Join us on May 9th at 2pm for a step-by-step illustration of how you can implement a simple, yet efficient, neural network model using fundamental Watson Components and IBM Watson Studio. 


Webinar: Surlean Foods tackles food safety in real-time using Cognos Analytics 11 - Register Today! 
Join us on June 13th at 2pm and see how utilizing Cognos Analytics 11 in conjunction with a new Deacom ERP deployment, the company now has real-time access to the current locations and distribution of all raw materials and produced goods.


 Missed a recent webinar? Watch it NOW!


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Tips & Tricks

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TM1 Save Data to TM1 Cube Save Data

Running a full TM1 Save Data to commit in-memory changes to disk locks up the entire model and depending on the size and number of changes can take anywhere from a couple seconds to an hour. To reduce the time and the locking, the TM1 TurboIntegrator (TI) function CubeSaveData can be used instead for each of the cubes in the model and run in parallel to cut an hour into a couple minutes depending on the model.

Check out the askQueBIT Knowledge-base to learn more.



Customer Spotlight Sunbelt Rentals

Increased Efficiency with IBM Planning Analytics and ReportWORQ
at Sunbelt Rentals

QueBIT delivered a single analytics platform with one version of the truth from a trusted source for Reporting, Analysis and ultimately, Planning and Predictive as well. Get the full story
 

Access Free Trials

QueBIT offers Free trials to allow you to explore new products. All downloads offer full functionality and are free for 30 days. Check out the product trials available today!


Software Lifecycle Updates

Cognos TM1 10.2.0 reached End of Support on 2018-09-30.
Cognos TM1 10.2.2 reaches End of Support on 2019-09-30. 
Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.x reached End of Support on 2018-04-30. 

Meet the Experts

We are committed to customer satisfaction. How do we maintain this? By investing in a highly skilled team of technology experts. Get to know our talented team.

JS

James Saronson, Advanced Analytics Architect

Right after completing my Master’s degree in computer engineering at Binghamton University I found QueBIT. I was looking for something challenging and interesting and QueBIT has not disappointed. Consulting with the Advanced Analytics team has been an excellent opportunity for me to apply my technical skills to solve real business problems, improving how businesses operate on a day to day basis. 

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