We find out what your forecasts are really costing you, and then we fix it. OpenForecast works with companies whose inventory decisions depend on demand forecasts — particularly where standard tools struggle: intermittent demand, spare parts, industrial distribution, and long-tail SKUs.
Start with a diagnostic
Most engagements begin here. Before anyone commits to a larger project, we examine your current setup and tell you what is actually going wrong — and what fixing it is worth.
How you forecast today
We start by understanding your process: how forecasts are produced, what they are used for, and by whom. Which decisions depend on them, where judgement enters, and where the numbers get overridden. This tells us what already works and what is worth changing.
Whether it holds up
Then we measure it properly. How accurate your forecasts really are, and whether your error measures reflect the decisions they feed. Where demand is censored by stockouts, so your history understates what customers actually wanted. How your safety stocks are set, and whether they match the service levels you are targeting.
What you get
A written report with our findings and a prioritised list of actions, ranked by what they are worth and what they cost to implement. We present it to your team online or on-site. The report is yours to act on, with us or without us.
What it takes
Around a month of analysis and writing. From you: sales and stock data with the longest history you have.
From £5,000, depending on the scale of the problem — a thousand SKUs is a different exercise from a hundred thousand, and a clean database export is different from a folder of spreadsheets.
On messy data: we would rather have your real data than a tidy version of it. Gaps, inconsistencies, changed SKU codes, and spreadsheets assembled by hand are all normal. Working with data as it actually exists is part of the job.
What happens next
The diagnostic tells you where you stand. Where you go from there depends on what it finds — and you are under no obligation to continue with us.
Training your team
Often the highest-value next step. Many forecasting problems are not tooling problems but understanding problems: the methods are available, but nobody was taught when to use which. We run practitioner courses and bespoke training for planning teams.
Implementation
Where the recommendations need building rather than explaining. We develop forecasting and inventory models around your demand patterns, your drivers, your ERP, and your planning cycle — and make sure the output is something your planners can actually run each week.
How we work
Explainable models
Every model we build is transparent and interpretable. You can see the logic, explain the numbers to finance, and defend the plan in a meeting. If a forecast cannot be explained, it cannot be trusted.
The right method, not the fashionable one
We use machine learning where it earns its place, and statistical models where they do. Neural networks, gradient boosting and conformal methods beat conventional approaches on some problems and lose badly on others, particularly with short histories or sparse demand. Knowing which case you are in is the expertise.
Methods you can inspect
Our work runs on the open-source packages we build and maintain — smooth and greybox — grounded in a published methodology (ADAM) and benchmarked on international forecasting competition data. You can read exactly what our methods do before you hire us.
No software to buy
We are not reselling a platform. The tools are free and open source, so what you pay for is the analysis and the judgement, not a licence. Nothing we build locks you into us.
[PLACEHOLDER — replace with a real client testimonial. Ideally one that names a concrete outcome: a service level held with less stock, a category of items brought under control, or a planning process that stopped relying on manual overrides.]
Where we help
Our methods apply wherever demand is uncertain and inventory decisions follow from it:
- Retailers and brands whose demand is driven by promotions, pricing and seasonality
- Manufacturers balancing component availability against working capital
- Distributors and wholesalers managing both fast movers and long tails
- Spare parts, MRO and aftermarket operations, where items move rarely and unpredictably
- Businesses with many SKUs, short histories, or several sales channels to reconcile
- Companies running ERP forecasting modules that nobody trusts but everybody uses
If your forecasts drive real inventory decisions, we should talk.
Book a free 30-minute intro call — no preparation needed. We will ask about your situation and tell you honestly whether and how we can help.
Prefer to write? Send us a message