Lokad makes statistical forecasting accessible to small, medium and large businesses to help them lower costs.
Lokad offers statistical forecasting on demand from within Microsoft Excel.
By Alpa Agarwal on Sat, 11/14/09 - 11:42pm.Lokad has democratized time series forecasting for businesses of all sizes. Whether you're a small coffee shop or a division of a large enterprise, forecasting point-of-sales, scheduling staff, call center management, eCommerce, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), all became easier because of Lokad's forecast-on-demand service.
Based in Paris, France, Lokad offers monthly subscription plans starting at free and up as a hosted, software-as-a-service. For example their "small" plan at $39/month allows you to forecast up to 1,000 items once a month.
Lokad offers a Web application programming interface (Web API) through which you can submit your data. This data is analyzed on Lokad's servers and returned to you. Third-party applications can also be integrated through the API.
And for those companies using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Lokad can be easily integrated, so at the click of a button you can send your data file to Lokad for computation.
What makes Lokad even cooler is their ability to integrate "Events" into their analyses. For example, if sales suddenly increased or if call center volume suddenly fell, you can flag this for Lokad; say a sales promotion or even a Twitter post led to increased sales or a power outage at a call center caused call volume to come to a halt.
The other really cool thing about Lokad is that it can compare your data anonymously to data from other similar businesses to improve forecasting or to identify issues. This ofcourse is the magic of aggregating data, which the Internet facilitates. For example, Mint.com not only analyzes your expenses, but also compares them to people who are similar to you to point out anomalies.
Lokad uses a SOAP-based Web Services API. It is compatible with all the major technologies such as .NET, Java or PHP. It allows you both upload your data and download your forecasts programmatically, making their service simple to use.
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Alpa Agarwal is Director, Product Marketing at eBay Inc. In her role she works with the engineering team to release new features to enhance the shopping user experience on eBay.com. Prior to eBay, Alpa worked with the engineering team at Microsoft's MSN.com to release new social & community features, working with partners such as Facebook.
Alpa has also held marketing communications roles in Microsoft's developer division working with startups.
Prior to that, Alpa led a global team at Microsoft to identify market trends. She regularly advised Microsoft’s senior leadership team, including Bill Gates, resulting in new acquisitions, technology investments and strategic corporate shifts.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Alpa founded MarketingCafe.com, an online community for marketers. She also worked at Sprint where she built a successful new product pipeline.
Alpa has taught in various Executive MBA programs, authored numerous articles and been quoted in international business journals. She has an MBA from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Alpa is based in Silicon Valley and can be reached at Alpa@AlpaAgarwal.com.
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