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Freedom furniture is part of the Group Australian Freedom of which brands comoBay Swiss made part and Captn snooze. In general, the Group has 236 stores specializing in the sale of different brands, 4 manufacturing plants, sales above $900 billion and seven distribution centers. Forecast Pro is used to forecast the sales generated by 60 Freedom Furniture stores. Hepke Poutsma, Senior Planner of household products, is responsible for nearly 5,000 items that belong to this classification, sold through 60 stores of Freedom Furniture in Australia and New Zealand, forecast the describes how they have managed to boost their forecast process. Like many companies Freedom Furniture used spreadsheets to prepare their forecasts. Excel is a friendly and flexible tool, however is susceptible to human errors, such errors were affecting the final outcome of the prognosis in Freedom. One of the main drawbacks is that you due to the volume of information that is handled, the leaves of calculation designed for the forecast were acquiring unmanageable dimensions for any user consuming valuable time, another drawback is that given the size of the files, the construction of graphics for patterns is towards impossible. The company’s sales are highly seasonal, and continually introduced new products that are tailored to the preferences of their clients, many products did not have a long history, and even in many cases below two years, which made it difficult to any tool identify patterns of seasonality with the product information only.

Then the company not only needed a tool that could identify seasonal patterns but also could apply them to products with a story limited (less than 2 years). Sales in stores are highly influenced by promotions, then the fact of being able to measure the impact of such events was a requirement vital when selecting a prognostic tool. Due to the complexity of the process of prognosis of Freedom was necessary to have a tool that would be easy to use and flexible in its configuration.