Driver-based forecasting for commercial teams

Build a forecast you're proud to present.

Pluto connects what's happening in your business to what's happening out in the world, through driver-based forecasting with a board-ready narrative built in. Unlock the insight your best analyst carries in their head: made explicit, auditable, and ready for the board.

Built by a commercial finance professional, not a Silicon Valley coder.

Pluto, photographed in true colour by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft

Oil · Brent crude +5%↳ cost base +1.8% · revenue −0.6%

UK · CPI +3.5%↳ cost base +2.6% · revenue +1.2%

Known, but never writtenYour best analyst knows intuitively which factors move the P&L. That potential is wasted reconciling spreadsheets.

A story, not a finger in the airWhen the CFO asks why the forecast moved, the best answer is a clear narrative grounded in quantitative analysis.

Gone when they leaveThe day that analyst walks out, years of hard-won commercial intuition walk out with them.

What is Pluto

Where strategy meets accuracy.

A typical forecast looks like this:

Your ERP reconciles the numbers.
After a lot of back-and-forth, analysts build the story retrospectively.
Then things change, and the process starts over.

Pluto works differently. Pluto uses machine learning and modern visual analytics so your team can bring what they know about the business straight into the forecast.

Reconciliation, strategic planning, and narrative usually mean three separate tools and constant back-and-forth. Pluto is built to do all three at once.

Venn diagram: three overlapping circles, Reconciliation, Strategy and Narrative, with Pluto glowing at their intersection.

Deterministic machine learning, not generative AIPluto extracts relationships from your data with advanced statistical techniques, which makes hallucinations impossible.

Every number is traceableIn high-stakes environments you need to know what moved the forecast: what, why, and by how much.

Grounded in forecasting researchBuilt on leading peer-reviewed research, and tested with commercial professionals.

How it works

A forecasting instrument, not a dashboard.

Your commercial drivers lead, and the forecast follows. Every number is traceable to the drivers behind it, and you can reforecast across months, quarters, a year, or a five-year plan.

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External data libraryIndicators, FX, commodities, energy and weather from trusted sources like the IMF, Bank of England and FRED, including their forward projections.
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Driver pipelineTransform that data for the highest significance to your business, separating real signal from noise.
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Scenario controlsSet your view on a driver, mark one-off events, and watch the forecast update, explanation and all.
✓
Walk-forward backtestingAccuracy measured on data the model never saw, reported in plain English.
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Export anywhereSend the forecast and its narrative to Excel or your board pack in a click.

Monthly revenue · driver-based forecast

3M6M1Y5Y

Retail sales LEADING Brent crude LAGGING CPI LAGGING Search index NO SIGNAL

Backtest: within 3.2% across the last 6 windows. Reliable to plan on.

SStyxready

/explain the revenue jump in Q3

Q3 revenue is up 4.1% on the prior forecast. The move is carried by retail sales (leading, 2-quarter lag) turning up in July, partly offset by a softer CPI read. Brent crude had no material effect this quarter.↳ traceable to 2 drivers · deterministic engine · no numbers invented

Add a driver for our EMEA expansion.

I'd suggest Eurozone retail sales (a demand proxy for the new region) or EUR/GBP (to catch the translation effect on reported revenue). Want me to test both?

Meet Styx

The analyst's copilot.

// AI applied where it earns its place

Styx explains what moved, drafts the commentary, and suggests drivers worth testing. The boring work, done. Ask Styx in plain language or reach for a command.

The numbers come from Pluto's deterministic, rule-based engine, not a language model guessing. Styx reads those workings and puts them into words. Styx never invents a figure, and never makes the call for you.

/explain /narrative /add driver /scenario

The research

This isn't a hunch. It's what the forecasting research shows.

The largest review of modern forecasting finds that structured human judgement consistently improves accuracy, and that human-guided variable selection beats automated approaches when real domain knowledge is present.

Petropoulos et al. (2022) · International Journal of Forecasting What this means, in plain terms

Combine the analyst's judgement and the machine's rigour, and you beat either on its own.

Zhang & Norman · 1994

The representational effect

How information is represented changes how well people reason. Pluto lays the drivers out so your judgement has more to work with.

Amershi et al. · 2014

Humans in the loop

Humans directing a machine-learning system outperform purely automated ones. Pluto is built to iterate with your expertise, not to replace it.

Hyndman & Koehler · 2006

Honest measurement

Accuracy only counts on data the model never saw. Pluto backtests every forecast and never marks its own homework.

Why Pluto

What Pluto is not.

In finance, trust comes before everything. So we're clear about exactly where the line sits.

Not a reconciliation tool. Your ERP already ties out the actuals. Pluto is about what happens next.

Not a replacement for your analysts. Pluto takes the manual grind off their plate so their commercial expertise goes further. The research is clear: human-guided forecasts are consistently more accurate.

Not a black box. Every number traces back to named drivers you can inspect, challenge, and override.

Not a replacement for judgement. Pluto surfaces the highest-signal drivers and shows the trade-offs. The strategic call is, and stays, yours.

The best of both

Machine learning can surface deep, statistically significant relationships with your key commercial drivers, but never replaces human judgement and intuition.

Pluto lets your team work to their full potential: fertile ground for a strategic conversation, not another spreadsheet to reconcile. You bring the context only you have; Pluto does the rest.

Join the waitlist

Quantify your instinct.

We're working with a small group of commercial teams ahead of launch. Tell us what you forecast and, once we're ready, we'll show you how Pluto can help.