SaskTel Inventory Forecasts Save the Day

Bringing telecommunications to 1.4M customers

Founded in 1908, SaskTel is a telecommunications company that prides itself on connecting its 1.4 million customers to the people and places they care about. Whether through new equipment or lightning-fast Internet, SaskTel provides customers and businesses the solutions they need

Being in business for over 100+ years, SaskTel knows how to adapt to best serve its customers. Since 2020 they’ve been using analytics with Alteryx to do just that — tackle inventory and supply chain challenges to meet service install timelines and increase customer satisfaction.

The frustrations of manually forecasting inventory

In 2021, SaskTel realized the need for inventory forecasts. Byron Waugh, who has been with SaskTel for 15 years, took on the new role of Demand Planning and Forecasting Manager.

At first, Byron started to manually forecast inventory. There was no easy way to get the data out SAP so he would bring up one material number at a time, look at the history, and type the information into a spreadsheet. The time it took him to do that for just 30 material numbers was lengthy and frustrating. He realized it wasn’t a sustainable process for all 3,300+ active material numbers that SaskTel used.

Creating 5-year forecasts

Byron was in luck. Around the time he was beginning his inventory forecasting initiatives, SaskTel started offering Alteryx training. With just five weeks of training and a sample time series forecast, Byron built a highly accurate forecasting report.
His forecasting report has proven especially important during the pandemic with material lead times 2.5-3 years out. Byron is forecasting a minimum of five years to make sure SaskTel has the materials they need when they need it and has been working closely with a business analyst to automate these processes.

Benefits that keep on multiplying

Previously SaskTel would only order a material a few months in advance, leading to 30 purchase orders a year for just one active material number, many which were rush orders thereby adding additional costs. The goal is to get the number of POs down to 4 per year, which would save SaskTel both money and time.

SaskTel is well on its way to reaching this goal. In February 2022, they ordered everything they needed for 2023 and 2024 to get ahead of supply chain issues.

Previously to get a report built like this, SaskTel would hire a consultant and it would have cost a quarter of $1M and taken months. SaskTel can now build the reports and dashboards they need internally and is improving timelines for both buyers and customers.

What’s next?

Byron has already created two more big reports for inventory management that flag when leads times on a product extend past what safety stocks are set to — helping them adjust to meet new lead times from vendors. His plan is create an interface so that buyers and procurement managers are able to access the reports themselves and see what they should be ordering.

Byron’s goal is to continue to use analytics to tackle new challenges within the company.

My goal is to automate as much as our inventory forecasting as we can so we can focus on new challenges within the company.