Avercast

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

Not that easy to make adjustments & keep the adjustments

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.