Inventory Forecasting Software: Roundup & Review of the Best Solutions
If your brand sells direct-to-consumer in 2022, you know how important it is to meet shipping deadlines. With rising delivery demands and increasing postal delays, missing a shipping deadline means your consumers will receive their purchase late, resulting in poor reviews at best and demands for refunds at worst. Still, an estimated one-third of businesses regularly miss shipment deadlines because they’ve sold a product that wasn’t in stock. In other words: Poor inventory forecasting.
What Is Inventory Forecasting Software (And How Does It Work)?
Inventory forecasting is a method of predicting the amount of inventory you will need in the future. This process, also called demand planning, is achieved using data, trends, and upcoming seasons or events to reliably meet customer demand without overstocking. To create accurate and reliable inventory forecasting, you need inventory forecasting software that considers several data points that help you synchronize sales pace and inventory availability. These data points include:
- Current inventory levels and outstanding purchase orders.
- Maximum stock levels with current warehouse space.
- Sales trends, upcoming seasons, or events.
No inventory forecasting software is the right solution for every business. This post examines five top options for inventory forecasting software in 2022, each tailored to a slightly different industry or use case, giving you all the information you need to make an informed decision.
| Software | Best Use Case | Key Advantage |
|---|---|---|
| Streamline | Fast-growing enterprises | AI-driven demand forecasting and 99%+ availability |
| Lokad | Aerospace and Manufacturing | Data import and export capabilities |
| Intuendi | Omni-channel businesses | Includes causal factors like promotions |
| Toolio | Fashion retailers | Automated workflows and custom metrics |
| NetStock | Teams without data analysts | Simple-to-use "what-if" scenario planning |
Top Inventory Forecasting Solutions
Streamline: Our Choice
Streamline is the industry-leading Inventory Forecasting Software Platform for fast-growing enterprises. The platform helps fast-growing manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, and distributors to operate more efficiently, reducing costs and increasing profits. It uses AI-powered demand forecasting and discrete-event simulation instead of static formulas, building a one-day resolution timeline to model real-world inventory flows.
The benefits of the Streamline’s inventory forecasting solution include:
- 99%+ inventory availability.
- Out-of-stock reduction by up to 98%.
- Excess inventory reduction by up to 50%.
- Planning time optimization by up to 90%.
- Multiple ERP integrations and bidirectional connectivity.
Lokad
Lokad is a quantitative supply chain optimization software. You can use Lokad to replace your current system of spreadsheets, helping your business improve stocking, pricing, production, and more. It is best suited for small- to mid-sized businesses in aerospace, automotive aftermarket, and manufacturing. Some pros of Lokad’s solution are the data import and export capabilities, enabling you to import data from another program. However, users report struggling to use the software on the Windows operating system.
Intuendi
Intuendi is a demand forecasting and inventory optimization software solution. Omni-channel support is at the center of Intuendi’s solution, making them a good fit for businesses looking to coordinate inventory across multiple channels and locations. One pro of Intuendi’s solution is the ability to include causal factors like promotions, stockouts, or calendar events in your forecast calculations. A negative that users have reported is the difficulty of manually uploading data from external sources.
Toolio
Toolio is a merchandising platform that automates workflows, provides insights in real-time, and supports collaboration over the cloud. Toolio offers personalized layouts, custom metrics, and dynamic open-to-buy plans. Toolio is a good fit for fashion retailers in particular. One downside of using Toolio is that it does not provide an API, which can make it challenging to integrate Toolio with other tools in your tech stack.
NetStock
NetStock offers a predictive inventory planning solution that can help your business with forecasting, replenishment, and more. If your team is looking for a simple-to-use solution that can be leveraged without data analysts on staff, NetStock may be a good solution to consider. Pros include its integration with Microsoft Dynamics and its “what-if” feature which allows users to do scenario planning. Some challenges include issues with the time fence horizon and the requirement of an ERP as it does not connect directly with sales channels.
