o9 Solutions Launches ML/AI-Powered Vertex AI Forecast Integration with Google Cloud to Help Retail and CPG Companies Improve Forecast Accuracy

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--o9 Solutions, a leading enterprise AI software platform provider for transforming planning and decision-making, announced today that it has launched Vertex AI Forecast integration with Google Cloud as part of their ongoing partnership.

The new machine learning-powered solution is designed to help the world’s largest and most complex retail and consumer goods companies create highly accurate demand forecasts that drive greater supply chain efficiencies and lead to increased market share and profits.

Introduced at Google Cloud Next ‘21, Vertex AI Forecast leverages machine learning models and vast data sets to understand the relationship between product demand and demand drivers such as promotions, pricing, competitive actions and external data such as weather, social sentiment, or Google Search trends. It then translates these signals into more accurate demand forecasts, allowing supply chain teams to make better planning decisions that minimize excess stock, avoid lost sales and reduce administrative and logistics costs.

“Shifting trends and consumer buying behaviors are pushing brands to rethink the way they do demand planning. Yet, many global retail companies and consumer brands continue to rely on historical sales information and manual adjustments rather than data-based science to forecast future demand. Vertex AI Forecast’s machine learning models integrate with supply chain workflows and connect diverse demand signals, making it easy for companies to generate accurate, highly scalable demand predictions - leading to better planning decisions and ultimately higher service levels,” said Chakri Gottemukkala, CEO of o9 Solutions.

Vertex AI Forecast integrates with o9’s AI-powered planning and decision-making platform through the company’s open architecture framework and leverages Google Cloud’s proprietary machine learning algorithms for demand forecasting. Vertex AI Forecast is the first of several solutions that o9 is jointly partnering on with Google Cloud as an application partner of Google Cloud’s recently launched digital Supply Chain Twin.

“For more than 10 years, Google Cloud has created cutting-edge technologies that learn from large data sets - recognizing patterns, conducting what-if scenarios, and weighing the pros and cons of tradeoffs,” said Carrie Tharp, VP, Retail, Google Cloud. “Our new Vertex AI Forecast solution, built on the Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform, applies our deep experience with these machine learning technologies to help retail and CPG companies quickly and easily scale their ability to generate and adjust forecasts based on real-time demand sensing.”

To learn more about Vertex AI Forecast, click here.

About o9 Solutions, Inc.

o9 Solutions is a leading AI-powered platform for integrated business planning and decision-making for the enterprise. Whether it is driving demand, aligning demand and supply, or optimizing commercial initiatives, any planning process can be made faster and smarter with o9’s AI-powered digital solutions. Bringing together technology innovations—such as graph-based enterprise modelling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for scenario planning, collaborative portals, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery—into one platform. For more information, please visit www.o9solutions.com.