sit on the bike and twist the throttle in an imagined on-track battle . Unfortunately , the closest anyone got to an MX bike in the Triumph pavilion was the family of goodlooking 1200 and 400 Scramblers .
If the air of disappointment was palpable over at Triumph , it was downright abundant at Ducati ’ s big presentation when there was zero mention of the hoopla surrounding their recent announcement of developing a motocross bike . Sure , there was plenty of noise surrounding the release of their 698 Mono RVE Hypomotard ( voted the “ most beautiful ” bike of the show ), but you could feel the crowd ’ s collective let down when Ducati CEO Claudio Domenicali closed the presentation without ever uttering a word about their abducting nine-time World MX Champion Tony Cairoli from arch competitor KTM to head the effort .
The first motocross bikes we saw were on display at the Kove booth , making up for the absences of the British and Italians . With a manufacturing legacy of just five years , this upstart Chinese brand has jumped into the off-road market in a big way . Awash in a teal green color scheme , the MX 250 and 450 boasted contemporary features but impressively outdated prices . Young as the brand is , they ’ ve already proven their hand by finishing three of their 450 Rally bikes in last year ’ s Dakar Rally – a factory bike on which the current production version is based .
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WHAT ABOUT THE OTHERS ? As with every EICMA show I ’ ve attended , the end of each day brought a familiar question , “ So , what bike did you like the most ?” The problem with answering is that there are too many bikes to “ like the most .”
But if I had to start choosing , I would start with the Bimoto Terra . It is not an adventure bike but a “ crossover ” bike . The Tera borrows the brand ’ s unique chassis and suspension layout made famous on their Tesi sportbike . Add to that a supercharged Kawasaki motor pumping out 197 horsepower and some sensuous bodywork , and you have a bike that is the very definition of extravagant .
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At the Kove booth , the Chinese manufacturer with Dakar success , rolled out an e-MX bike .
Thankfully ( at least for this one old guy ), neither the industry nor at least an influential slice of the market has seemed to tire of retro-themed bikes . At EICMA this year , the winner for the best-looking and most talked about model must be Yamaha ’ s race-inspired XSR900 GP . If anyone could ’ ve conceived of a modern , four-stroke version of Kenny Robert ’ s edition RZ350 , this bike would be based on Yamaha ’ s popular MT series of sports bikes .
This year ’ s most notable MIA brands ? There would be two : Italy ’ s e-moto pioneer brand , Energica , who ’ ve traditionally shown up with the most advanced electric superbike
See EICMA , Page 7
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Polaris Inc . has been named a winner of the 16th Annual Digital Leadership Awards by Ventana Research . The company was recognized in the Office of Finance category for its work with OneStream Software .
The Digital Leadership Awards recognize individuals and companies that have embraced the use of technology to help them lead their businesses and optimize readiness across their people , processes , information and technology to grow their impact and industry potential .
The Corporate Finance team at Polaris is recognized for its leading and innovative use of applications and technologies to improve insights , enhance decision-making and improve processes and productivity within the Office of Finance . Melanie Hermann , director of Finance Processes & Systems at Polaris , led the initiative which leveraged OneStream ’ s Intelligent Finance Platform and Sensible Machine Learning ( ML ) solution to transform the company ’ s forecasting and planning processes .
Polaris implemented Sensible ML in 2022 , initially focusing its project on the North American Off-Road Products global business unit with a 12−month forecasting time horizon focusing on variables impacting their Shipped Units forecast . Polaris leveraged Sensible ML to examine six years of weekly unit sales across 181 products . The ML service cross-correlated those demand models with commodity prices and events – such
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as holiday promotions – and generated over 2,800 models for comparison . The OneStream ML models proved to be the most efficient , providing increased insights and incorporating historic data .
As a result of implementing Sensible ML , Polaris is reducing forecasting cycle times . The Finance team also has more insights into the key forecast drivers , helping drive more informed decision-making . Additionally , the ML forecasting process integrated seamlessly with Polaris ’ s financial planning and forecasting processes , all on OneStream ’ s unified platform .
“ The ability to quickly generate driverbased forecasts is essential to adapting to our changing business conditions ,” Hermann says . “ Incorporating AI into our planning and forecasting through the OneStream Sensible ML solution accelerates the forecasting process and further elevates it with powerful ML data-driven forecasts . Sensible ML forecasts have shown to be more efficient , and the Value-Add Dashboard provides the business users with insights into the key features driving the forecast to easily manage , improve , and enhance the model .”
Sensible ML is OneStream ’ s first AIenabled solution designed to productize time-series ML for CPM processes that integrate with existing planning processes to drive improved forecasting efficiency and increased insights . These expanded capabilities provide additional transparency and trust for users while increasing agility , time to value and enterprise value associated with operational planning processes . Key capabilities
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of Sensible ML include the ability to automatically create thousands of weekly and / or daily demand plans for use across reports and visualizations that management can use to understand the forecast impact on revenue , material costs , inventory and labor plans . Businesses can also monitor and retrain ML models to enable continuous forecasting and scenario planning with full visibility into model performance .
“ Melanie ’ s contributions to the Office of Finance have demonstrated outstanding leadership and innovation in implementing OneStream and Sensible ML to drive significant improvements across Polaris ’ planning and forecasting processes ,” says Robert Kugel , senior vice president and research director at Ventana Research . “ The ability to quickly generate driver-based forecasts is essential for businesses to adapt to today ’ s changing business conditions . Polaris has achieved impressive results with OneStream ’ s Sensible ML solution delivering more efficient forecasting , with increased transparency and insights to enable business agility .”
“ Under Melanie ’ s leadership , Polaris has gained increased efficiency and transparency in their planning and forecasting processes . Melanie ’ s vision to partner with OneStream and implement Sensible ML to align financial and operational processes has resulted in key innovations that add speed and efficiency , with insights into key drivers for more informed decision-making ,” says Tom Shea , CEO of OneStream . “ Congratulations to Melanie and the Polaris team on this incredible recognition .”
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