Company Information

RSG Background

The software Intelligent Forecaster is developed and provided by the RSG GmbH, founded 10.03.1989 as a public limited company in Germany. RSG is a conventional 'bricks-and-mortar' software company founded and registered 10.03.1989 under German / European law (Official register: HRB 43225, Amtsgericht Hamburg) with capital assets of DM 300,000.- (€153,387.56). Our headquarter-offices are located in Hamburg, Germany: Return Software GmbH, Hinterm Stern 24, D-22041 Hamburg, Germany. The company has been continously under the supervision of its CEO Dr. Sven F. Crone since 1992. Since then it has taken responsibility of providing high-quality projects and reliable standard software solutions as a reliable partner for the German and European market, offering transparent liability and high-quality software made-in-Germany. We focus our software exclusively on time series forecasting problems, and collaborate with leading international universities in order to offer you proven state-of-the art forecasting software and services - all high-quality, made in Germany!

BIS lab Mission

The software and website are branded as BIS³lab™ which is a new brand name for intelligent products and services. In 2000 the RSG shifted its focus from providing a standard software package in material management for a consortium of FMCG wholesalers (now merged to one of Europe's largest wholesalers) entirely to forecasting, drawing upon our long experience in forecasting for demand planning and inventory management. To gather the necessary resources BIS3lab™ was founded in 2003 as an interdisciplinary competence centre for business forecasting and corporate data mining, hosted jointly by the Centre for Forecasting at Lancaster University and the Institute of Information Systems at the University of Hamburg. As a spin-off of these renowned institutions, BIS3lab™ is specialised in supporting managerial decision making and delivering tailor-made solutions for complex operational planning tasks. The full range of services covers technology transfer, forecasting consultancy and software selection, software training and professional education as well as designing and developing fully functional decision support systems.

BIS lab Members

In addition to the core team consisting of Dr. Sven F. Crone (CEO, Managing Director), Heiko Kausch (Application Development), Dr. Stefan Lessmann (Senior Consultant & Implementation Support) and Dr. Robert Stahlbock (Senior Consultant), BIS3lab™ is closely connected to the abovementioned research units and draws upon a world-wide network of experts and expertise to offer its customers cutting-edge technology in various areas of forecasting and prediction. As a young and emerging company, BIS3lab designs solutions in close liaison with business partners, who have the unique opportunity to actively participate in system development cycles and find their needs and requirements addressed in the best possible way to achieve a maximum degree of efficiency and effectiveness.

BIS lab Products

Following this philosophy, BIS3lab’s flagship product, the Intelligent Forecaster™ software package, has been developed over the past 4 years in active collaboration with the Beiersdorf AG (BDF), Hamburg, in order to support the company’s demand planning and sales forecasing processes through large-scale forecasting with state-of-the-art algorithms from artificial and computational intelligence, such as artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Regression. The software is currently being collaboratively prototyped at BDF and has been initially showcased at various conferences with overwhelming response. In addition, the software has proven it’s worth in the recent MH-competition and the ESTSP’08 competition with two second places in a field of multiple, well established statistical and AI competitors.