November 3rd 2022, Release Note: WFM UK | Scheduling: NextGen Interval Forecast Distribution

Summary

Release date: 3rd November 2022

• Enabled by Default? - Y
• Set up by customer Admin? - N
• Enable via Support ticket? - N
• Affects configuration or data? - Y

What's Changing?

For forecasts from 14th November, the interval distribution in Scheduling will be generated from Fourth's NextGen forecast engine.

Reason for the Change

An accurate estimate of future sales allows users to plan the labour, inventory, and intra-day workload in the most efficient way. Forecasting has a meaningful impact on profitability – labour management and inventory costs, limiting opportunity costs.

Powered by machine learning, Fourth's NextGen Forecast Engine harnesses cutting-edge technology to empower users to make better-informed spending plans and, ultimately, grow the bottom line.

Customers Affected

All Scheduling and Advanced Schedules customers using Fourth's system forecast.

Release Note

NextGen interval forecasts are smoothed across intervals, removing peaks and troughs from interval-to-interval forecasts that may have been apparent previously.

Prior to the change, the forecasts generated appeared as (Fig. 1). Interval forecasts generated by the NextGen forecast engine result in the line appearing with a curve (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1 - Example of previous distribution

Fig. 2 - Updated distribution with smoothed curve

Additional Resources

February 14th 2022, Release Note: WFM UK | Labour Productivity: NextGen Forecasting