ToolsGroup's Machine Learning Partner Wins 2015 EY Startup Challenge

BOSTON, June 23, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- ToolsGroup announced today that its sister company and partner, Rulex, is a winner of the 2015 EY Startup Challenge. This year's Challenge brings EY (formerly Ernst & Young) clients together with the most promising startups in the areas of 'supply chain visibility' and 'intelligent customer experience'.

ToolsGroup is the exclusive supply chain application seller of Rulex's next-generation machine learning technology, which is also embedded in ToolsGroup's SO99+ supply chain software.  Rulex™ has proven to significantly improve planning outcomes for ToolsGroup customers with complex supply chain planning challenges, such as trade promotion optimization, forecasting new products and customer segmentation/clustering. For instance:

• Food company Danone deployed it to identify the effects of promotional and media events. Its trade promotion forecasting covered a wide range of fresh products characterized by dynamic demand, short shelf life and the need for accurate demand forecasting. The project resulted in a 20% reduction in forecast error, 30% reduction in lost sales, and a 10 point ROI improvement in promotions.

• Heating and air conditioning (HVAC) manufacturer Lennox deployed it to sift through hundreds of thousands of rapidly changing SKUs to identify "clusters" of those with similar seasonality profiles. Machine learning has allowed Lennox to automate the process and create an improved inventory mix over its large distribution network.

• Dairy producer Granarolo used it to grow average forecast reliability from 80% to 85% and cut its inventory levels in half. Granarolo also halved its delivery lead times, so fresh items are available on retailers' shelves longer, resulting in higher profits and less waste.

According to Joseph Shamir, ToolsGroup CEO and member of Rulex's Board of Directors, "Rulex being chosen for this year's EY Startup Challenge is more proof that Rulex's and ToolsGroup's earlier investments in machine learning are paying off for us and for our customers."

About Rulex
Rulex® provides automatic products and services for predictive analytics and big data applications in vertical markets such as supply chain, marketing, risk forecast, automation and biomedical. Rulex® solutions are based on our innovative machine-learning technology that natively deals with heterogeneous data and automatically extracts models of behavior described by IF-THEN rules. Rulex® products are must-have tools for proactive managers who want to make fast and aware decisions leveraging real world data.

About ToolsGroup
ToolsGroup is a global provider of "Powerfully Simple" supply chain planning and demand analytics software. Our customers overcome volatile demand and challenging supply chains to generate accurate forecasts and outstanding customer service levels with less global inventory. Reliable behind-the-screen technology and scalable statistical models enable highly intelligent data-driven decision making, combined with ease of use. ToolsGroup's solutions span key supply chain planning areas such as Demand Forecasting and Collaboration, S&OP, Demand Sensing, Promotion Forecasting and Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization (MEIO). For more information visit www.toolsgroup.com or follow us on Twitter @ToolsGroup.

SOURCE ToolsGroup

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