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Eight O'Clock Coffee Brews Big Forecasting Improvements

The Eight O'Clock Coffee company, maker of the fourth largest brand of coffee by volume in the United States grocery channel, has purchased Smart Software Inc.'s flagship product, SmartForecasts Enterprise. The company is a provider of demand forecasting, planning and inventory optimization solutions. Eight O'Clock Coffee plans to use the solution to streamline its forecasting process and increase forecast accuracy. The company will integrate SmartForecasts with its corporate ERP system using Microsoft's SQL Server database.  

According to Jeff Howard, Eight O'Clock Coffee director of information technology, "Not only was SmartForecasts' ease of use important to us, but the system has the breadth and depth of functionality that we needed now and will need as our business grows."

SmartForecasts replaces a manual spreadsheet-based forecasting system with limited capacity and capabilities. The new system will be used to forecast all of the company's finished goods items that are sold to grocers. The software's ability to model sales promotions was an important consideration for Eight O'Clock Coffee as these promotions drive significant demand. SmartForecasts' promotion modeling functionality automatically forecasts future promotion-driven sales for each product item, and enables item-specific promotion management policies that provide not only better demand forecasting results but also more cost-effective safety stock and inventory planning strategies.

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