Lokad has developed a forecasting technology that is uniquely suitable for supply chain optimization. We deliver probabilistic forecasts, which are about the only statistical method that works when dealing with erratic or intermittent demand.
Our commitment is to deliver the best forecast that technology can produce. Our technology leverages machine learning and big data. We also use high-dimensional correlation between products. Indeed, when considering products in isolation, there is usually not enough data to produce an accurate forecast.
Our forecasting engine doesn't require any statistical skills to be operated as it auto-configures itself based entirely on the data that is provided. Compared to traditional approaches, it doesn't only save months of work, but it also contributes to increased accuracy.
Seasonality, trends, product lifecycles, collections, promotions, stock-outs, day of the week, day of the month, bulk purchases, project-based purchases … all these demand patterns are managed automatically by our forecasting engine. If the data exists then Lokad will make the most of it.
Optimizing the purchase orders is not only a delicate operation - it should not just reflect the future demand but all the economic drivers as well - it’s also usually a very time-consuming operation. Lokad completely streamlines this challenge.
We combine the probabilistic forecasts produced by our forecasting engine with all the relevant economic drivers for your company: carrying costs, cost of stock-outs, gross-margins, shipment costs, in order to calculate purchase order quantities that maximize the returns for every single dollar or euro that you put into your inventory.
When we say that we can deliver your next fully optimized purchase order in 1 click, it’s not exactly true, because Lokad can actually schedule the operation to bring to down the actual number of clicks to zero. In any case, we strive for full automation to refresh all your numbers as frequently as you need them.
Composing a purchase order that fulfills all of the constraints can feel like solving a Sudoku grid: you need to take into account many overlapping constraints. Lokad manages all those constraints, including the complicated ones.
Minimal Order Quantities come in many flavors: quantity per item, quantity per order, quantity per batch, quantity per shipment, lot multipliers. Lokad supports all of these variants, and even all combinations of these variants.
With overseas imports frequently comes the constraint of purchasing up to a full container, or half of a full container. Optimizing that space means saving money and time. Lokad composes reports that allow you to maximize the content of each container and minimize the cost.
You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. With Lokad, you can craft the exact KPIs that your business needs to track its inventory performance. Naturally, we also use it to track the performance of Lokad’s own inventory suggestions.
Unlike solutions that force you to drill-down through walls of vanity metrics, Lokad lets you gather all of your KPIs into one page. Naturally, you can create as many dashboards as you like, each time crafting the exact set of metrics that you want to see together.
Even the most complex dashboards rarely take more than 500ms (half a second) to be displayed. All of our dashboards are fully pre-computed for near-instant display no matter how many gigabytes of input data have been processed to produce those numbers.
Our dashboards can be embedded into any third-party webapp as long you can insert a tiny HTML snippet (iframe inclusion). Lokad supports full collaborative approaches where everyone can look at the same numbers at the same time.
Lokad offers a cloud-based file hosting service that is tailored toward business data files. In order to deliver demand forecasts or optimized prices, Lokad can process any file hosted in your account.
Lokad loads and processes tabular files that are stored in your account. Lokad supports a wide spectrum of data formats such as CSV or Excel sheets. If your company uses one of our built-in integrations, your business data import will be handled automatically. However, it is also possible to load files manually or use automated file transfer protocols, such as SFTP, FTPS and FTP.
Everything in Lokad can be exported as Excel sheets or flat files (CSV). Those data files can be download through the web, and directly injected into your Lokad account in order to offer the possibility to perform a programmatic retrieval through (S)FTP.
When it comes to business optimization, every single detail matters. In order to cope with all business rules, no matter how complex, Lokad has designed a programming language - Envision - specifically tailored for supply chain.
Excel has some very good properties: it keeps the data very close to you, and it gives you a lot of flexibility to define your own rules or calculations. Envision provides the same features, but powered by the cloud. With Envision you can process files much larger than you could ever do with Excel.
Generic programming languages are tough precisely because they offer the possibility to do anything. However, Envision is very unlike those languages: Envision is accessible to anyone fluent with Excel formulas. The "trick" behind Envision is a narrow focus: Envision is completely focused on supply chain, which eliminates entire classes of problems.
Advanced forecasts are more accurate, but can’t be computed in real time. However, Lokad lets you orchestrate and schedule all the calculations so that the numbers are ready whenever your company needs them.
Advanced forecasts necessitate data from multiple operations. Lokad provides a possibility to define a specific order for running projects. In this way, the updated data from previous runs can be used in other projects, as the run will only start when the previous one is completed. This allows you to always have the most accurate reports possible.
Would you like to have your reports ready on a regular basis? Whether you wish to run your projects every day, week or month, with Lokad’s scheduling tool this will be done automatically. By scheduling the runs at a specific moment of the day (or night) this also allows you to always have your reports ready when you need them, without waiting.
