Volume Drivers

You can configure as many as 31 named entities for volume drivers, such as sales, items, cartons, and customers. Then you assign each driver to one or more categories in the Business Structure.

You can create all your volume drivers and then assign each volume driver to a category in the Business Structure, or you can create and assign them one at a time.

Note: The recommended way to assign volume drivers is bottom up, starting with the lowest forecast categories and working up to departments and sites.

Volume drivers can be converted into metrics and KPIs for use in the operational dashboard, Dataviews and reports. See the description of the VOLUMEDRIVER mapping category in the Application Setup > KPI Builder online help for additional information.

  1. Go to Administration > Application Setup > Forecaster Setup > Volume Drivers.
  2. Enter a Name.
  3. On the Create Volume Drivers tab, click New or select a volume driver and click an action.

  4. Note: You cannot delete a volume driver if a forecast category is assigned to it.

  5. Enter a Name.
  6. In Row Number enter the placement of the row in the Forecast Planner. For example, 1 designates the left-most position.
  7. In Decimal select how many decimal places to display; for example, enter 2 to have decimals calculated to one hundredths (0.00).
  8. If you are tracking an amount of money, select Currency. The symbol for your currency displays in the forecast factor for that driver.
  9. If this driver is a dependent driver and its value depends on another driver value, select Dependent.
  10. Click Save & Close.

Note: Volume Label field must match the label in the imported volume data file. This provides the proper mapping for importing volume data.

  1. Click the Assign Volume Drivers tab.
  2. Select a Forecast Week.
  3. On the business structure, select the category to which you are assigning the volume driver.
  4. Select the driver that you are assigning to the category.
  5. If the volume data goes directly to the category, click Direct.
  6. Click Save.

You can create volume driver metrics, and KPIs that employ those metrics, to be used in a Dataview or report. When a user runs a Dataview that includes metrics that are mapped to volume drivers (either directly or because the metrics are used in KPI definitions), the most up-to-date, accurate volume driver data is returned to the Dataview or report.

KPI Builder (Administration > Application Setup > KPI Builder) provides a special mapping category type (VOLUMEDRIVER) that allows metrics to be mapped to a volume driver that was created in Forecasting so that these metrics and the KPIs that use them may be used in Dataviews and reports and return up-to-date values for forecasted (forecasted and generated), actual, and budget data.

When you create a metrics, the VOLUMEDRIVER mapping categories are provided only when you select a data source for the metric that is related to Forecasting. It is the only mapping category type supported for these data sources:

  • Actual Volume
  • Budget Labor Cost
  • Budget Labor Hours
  • Budget Volume
  • Earned Hours
  • Forecasted Hours
  • Forecasted Volume
  • Generated Forecasted Hours
  • Generated Forecasted Volume

To summarize the process:

  1. Decide which volume drivers whose data you want to appear in Dataviews and reports. For example, you may want to display sales, customercustomer, and the volume for any other volume driver for forecasted (forecasted and generated), actual, and budget data.
  2. In each case that you selected, you must create a mapping category that maps the volume driver by its exact name in Forecasting to the VOLUMEDRIVER mapping category type . You do this in Administration > Application Setup > KPI Builder > Mapping Category Definition .
  3. Using Administration > Application Setup > KPI Builder > Metric Definition define each volume driver metric that you want to use in Dataviews and reports, ensuring that each is mapped to the appropriate VOLUMEDRIVER mapping category that you created above.

The defined metrics are now available to be selected as columns to be displayed in Dataviews and reports.