Que sera sera,
Whatever will be, will be,
The futureт€™s not ours to see,
Que sera sera.

IF YOUR maths is good enough, perhaps you can see the future, or at least be reasonably confident of what the outcome will be, so that you wonт€™t have to sing, Que sera sera.

Ling Kai Tien (picture) with his team of engineers at AlpSoft and researchers that AlpSoft collaborated with, are indeed confident that their forecast tool, with the catchy name, Profix, and embedded with more than 20 mathematical methods and algorithms, can give you pretty accurate results of, say, your sales, demand and inventory forecasts.

т€œCompared with other tools from big names like Oracle and SAP that need a lot of human interventions, our tool is fully automatic,т€ says Ling, managing director of AlpSoft. т€œWe have tested it against the others and PROFIX was the most accurate.т€

He gives an actual example in a large oil refinery in Singapore. The crude oil that comes in has to be refined into different types of oil.

Supposed, based on intuition, you expect a high demand for oil product A, and little demand for B. Accordingly, you refine the crude into mostly A. But if it turns out that there is strong demand for B, then you end up suffering two consequences: (1) missed opportunity because you donт€™t have enough of B to meet demand, and (2) holding cost for A which you have too much but which no one else wants.

According to Ling, his software tool gives only single-digit percentage errors in its market demand predictions, while the percentage error of the others were double digits.

Inventory forecast is one of the most vexing activities, not just for manufacturers but any trading company that keeps stock.

To obtain accurate forecast requires a lot of human intervention. For instance, you need to select the correct algorithm first. Then you have to identify the correct parameters for the chosen algorithm before executing the forecast run. You would also need to repeat this entire process for each run because different stock keeping units (SKUs) show different demand patterns.

Many users end up choosing the wrong algorithm, or set the wrong parameters, or they just give up and simply use one uniform set of algorithm-parameter combination across all the SKUs, giving results that are statistically meaningless.

AlpSoft says its Profix incorporates optimisation techniques into statistical forecasting algorithms. When you select the т€œBest Fitт€ setting, Profix automatically searches, evaluate and chooses the optimal forecasting methods and algorithms for each individual SKU without your intervention.

The result: Any user can now generate highly accurate and optimised forecast with simple navigation steps without prior knowledge of statistical theories. There is no need to manually select algorithms and type in parameters, nor resort to a one-algorithm-for-all-models settings.

Profix was tested with a chemical product distributor which distributes more than 150 products globally. It has been facing very high inventory cost due to the nature of its products, and its own internally-generated forecast was only 50 percent accurate on average.

Ling says he plans to introduce Profix as a Web-based т€œsoftware-as-a-serviceт€ product. т€œWeт€™re working with a consortium to participate in the IDAт€™s Grid Services Provisioning Call-For-Collaboration project.т€

On the proposed Grid Exchange, service providers and independent software vendors such as AlpSoft, can provide infocomm resources and applications on a pay-per-use basis.

Besides Profix, AlpSoft plans to put up another four software applications on the Grid. One such application is its current flagship product, OGIX or Open Geographic Information Xchange. Customers for this software include SMRT for its Integrated Bus Operating System.

About AlpSoft

The company began six years ago as a supplier of IT-trained staff for other employers. It has since moved into software development with its OGIX and other specialised applications.

With an annual turnover of more than $2 million and a staff strength of 75 software and systems engineers, it focuses very much on project-based tasks for clients. Ling foresees the company moving into its third phase, offering productised commodities such as its Profix application.

More on AlpSoft in the Business Directory

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