We have a much better inventory position largely due to using Smart IP&O. Our inventories are better aligned with the customer demand and timing of the demand. We are able to better identify trends and pick up on changes in a more effective manner by using Smart IP&O. We are also able to provide the leadership team and our factory partners with projections regarding our anticipated demand. In addition, our inventory turns have increased. Smart has been very valuable in our S&OP processes and has made a positive difference in our inventories.

Smart IP&O is user friendly, easy to learn, and navigate. It's ability to leverage various mathematical forecasting techniques is one of my favorite attributes. It is a great help in our capability to respond to unplanned demand changes, without creating obsolescence.

Smart IP&O does not have the functionality to perform an ABC stratification. This feature would be useful to our business segments and a time saver for us.

Our experience has been very positive. The team at SMART is great to work with and provide quick support when needed.

The tight integration with our Epicor ERP\Kinetic software. Without a solution to generate demand for our high mix - low volume products we would be in the dark. This tool replaces a bunch of spreadsheets that where never populate with live data.

The cost is a bit high for our size company. There are many features we do not use. This product is like any feature rich product it takes ownership and dedication to fully utilize.

Good so far!

The software UI is effortless and easy to navigate.

Not necessarily a con, but initially it does take a while to customize the settings to your business operational goals. However, the learning curve is not that steep.

Built in integration to Epicor. Responsiveness of company to add functionality that was needed. Easy export/import capabilities.

Length of time needed to tweak functionality to match our requirements, but I appreciate the responsiveness and willingness to do that.

SDP has bridged the gap between sales and supply chain team. Forecast is based on communication with customers which had also made relationship between account manager and customer stronger. SDP has also helped identifying new customer and/or product and made onboarding of either new product and/or customer seamless. This helps in preparing the supply chain and production with right components and helps fulfilling the customer commitment especially the new one.

We customized SDP to give us visibility on customer’s business by finished SKU. SDP Dashboard provides historical sales in a glance both by number and in graphical view. Depending on the scenario and preference data presentation either in text or visual provides key insights in past usage. SDP automatically picks up the most appropriate forecast method based on the trend. SDP provides us framework for the tiered customers identified for forecasting. SDP’s forecast is often the starting point of conversations with customers driving our 80% of business (revenue). Customer and account manager collaboration helps fine tuning the forecast in SDP platform. For rest of the customers driving 20% business, we let SDP drive the forecast, in other words we use system generated forecast. This process is working in great favor for us as forecast vs. actuals (revenue) is within 3-5%. Forecast accuracy is also a great tool and provides means to dig deep if forecast is off for specific customer and/or SKU The product took some time for team to get familiar with. There were several iterations where we took team’s feedback to Smart team and tweaked the tool and data presentation to our need. Smart team was very helpful and efficient throughout the process.

We needed Smart’s help to apply some of the more advanced functions, such as the treatment of new or zero demand items, but the functionality was solid The application is powered by transactional data automatically delivered from our Epicor ERP. This can introduce some complexity at first, but the benefits are great – eliminating the need for database creations and management, and providing fine-grained data for sophisticated analysis

Our forecast was not our complete product offering and always depended too much on history. We struggled to forecast specifically and used general families that failed to affect our specific items. Our excel sheets were slow and cumbersome and we couldn’t drill down quickly through are data and had no ability to see projected outcomes with different inputs. SMART has given us the ability to solve all of the above and has always been quick to respond to service and questions we may have.

The ease of processing large amounts of data. Adjusting quickly at different levels that flow through was a huge improvement to our process. Being able to make changes at different levels of our product hierarchy achieved more buy in from marketing. SMART has allowed our general information from sales turn into specific product builds.

Being able to consolidate all the different projects into a report and show how well we are doing would be very helpful. I'd love to be able to see my snapshot, SMART and how we did in my product hierarchy across all projects without having to run each project to pull the data. I have not reached out about the custom options SMART provides so this con may be on my end.

Smart is the critical tool we use to manage our forecasts across a large and dynamic set of Products/Parts, multi-national sites, and complex supply chains. The ability of the software to provide a statistical forecast as baseline, allow adjustments (if/as necessary) by various subject matter experts, each recorded as ‘snapshots’ for consensus building and later use in accuracy/improvement efforts, then ultimately feed the forecast data directly into our Material Requirements Planning software is central to our S&OP process.

The people at Smart are the key to their success. Over the years we have sent them a variety of challenges that required a range of skill sets within their organization. They have demonstrated the ability to understand the challenges, scope and document the solutions in detail, and then deliver the intended results on time and in budget.

We are currently turning what we feel is today’s biggest weakness into tomorrow’s greatest strength. Reporting out of Smart has been of limited use for us up to date. We are working to implement the next generation of reporting, the ‘Smart Studio’, into our S&OP process.

We are optimizing our inventory and setting up our min/max levels for stock items. Smart makes this an easier process for us.

Smart does a nice job integrating with Epicor. It has good visual tools. We use the custom lists frequently.

Improvement in reports or reporting features is needed.

Moving from excel to Smart has taken our forecasting to another level. It has saved us loads of time from updating excel spreadsheets each month, which were getting out of control. We are much more confident in the forecasts we are using and the purchase orders we are placing. We have also been able to react much quicker to the major supply chain and demand planning challenges over the past few years.

Smart has really powerful features and functionality for both forecasting and inventory optimization that other software packages we considered didn't have. The software is reasonably priced for what it does, which made it affordable for us and a great value. Smart's ability to load and compare multiple forecasts has worked really well for us.

Support is very good but would like more resources for self-help and to leverage more of the features and functionality.

Systemically using statistical modeling for our shipping patters that provided insights to our Sales pipeline. We have also integrated SMART IP&O with our ERP software to assist in the management of inventory policies.

The software and support meets our needs

Very happy with software.

The forecast feature is extremely helpful. I am still a new user. I have not fully utilize the Smart.

Nothing I can think of at this moment.