Introduction

Enhanced Spend Forecasting has been added to empower users with a flexible and precise tool to forecast cloud spend, enabling more confident financial decisions. Designed to meet diverse forecasting requirements, it delivers improved accuracy through advanced AI algorithms and supports multi-dimensional analysis for tailored insights.

• Flexible Forecasting Across Multiple Dimensions: Generate forecasts for various business contexts, including tenants, cloud accounts, regions, tags, and charge types.
• Context-Aware Forecasting: Forecasts adapt dynamically based on applied filters, ensuring insights remain relevant to the specific business context.
• Extended Forecasting Horizons: Plan with monthly granularity up to 13 months ahead and daily granularity up to 14 days into the future, supporting better financial strategies and resource allocation. Based on the forecast requested, the platform auto adjusts look back period up to 12 months of daily granularity data to get the best median accuracy.
• AI-Powered Accuracy: Advanced AI algorithms enhance accuracy, aligning forecasts with actual trends and providing reliable predictions that minimize uncertainty.
• Contextual Flexibility: Easily adjust forecasts by including or excluding specific costs or credits to meet reporting and budgeting objectives, ensuring tailored and actionable insights.

Cost forecasts at different granularities are based on the lookback period defined below. The lookback period refers to the number of past days used to calculate the forecast. Forecasts for the same month may vary depending on the number of forecast months selected, as the lookback period changes accordingly.

Configuring Enhanced Spend Forecasting

The Forecasting filter empowers users with a highly flexible and precise tool to forecast cloud spend, enabling more confident financial decisions. Designed to meet diverse forecasting requirements, it delivers improved accuracy through advanced AI algorithms and supports multi-dimensional analysis for tailored insights.

1. Click "FinOps".

In the platform, on the left navigation pane, click FinOps.

2. Click "Dashboard".

Click Dashboard.

3. Select a dashboard.

Click the drop-down on the top-left corner of the screen and select a dashboard.

4. Add a custom filter.

To add a custom filter in the Filter section, click Add.

5. Select Cloud Account.

From the list of options that displays, click to select Cloud Account.

6. Select value for Cloud Account filter.

For the Cloud Account filter, click the drop-down and select appropriate value(s). In this case, 'Select All' option.

7. Click "Ok".

Click Ok to confirm your selection.

8. Click Filter to expand/collapse the filter view.

In the Cost Trend widget, click the Filter icon to expand or collapse the filter view. The Cost Trend widget shows few pre-set filters along with Group By filter. Users can add custom filter to view specific cost details.

9. Click "Add".

To add a custom filter, click "Add".

10. Select "Cloud Account".

Select the Cloud Account option from the available list.

10. Select value for the filter.

For the Cloud Account filter, click the drop-down list and select applicable values. In this case, select Select All.

12. Click "Ok".

To confirm the selected values for the filter, click Ok.

13. Expand/Collapse Filters.

In the Cost Trend widget, click the Filter icon to view or hide the pre-defined filters and custom filters.

14. Select a value for Forecast filter.

Click the drop-down list for the Forecast filter and select a specified time range.

15. Click "6 Months"

For example, in this case, the value 6 Months is selected for the Forecast filter.

16. Click Table View icon.

To view the widget details in tabular format, click the Table View icon.

17. Click Chart View icon.

To view the cost details in a chart view, click the Chart View icon.

This guide covered a series of steps that are essential for utilizing the Forecast Filter efficiently during employee training.