Michael Gilliland is a longtime business forecasting practitioner and formerly a Product Marketing Manager for SAS Forecasting. He is on the Board of Directors of the International Institute of Forecasters, and is Associate Editor of their practitioner journal Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Mike is author of The Business Forecasting Deal (Wiley, 2010) and former editor of the free e-book Forecasting with SAS: Special Collection (SAS Press, 2020). He is principal editor of Business Forecasting: Practical Problems and Solutions (Wiley, 2015) and Business Forecasting: The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Wiley, 2021). In 2017 Mike received the Institute of Business Forecasting's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2021 his paper "FVA: A Reality Check on Forecasting Practices" was inducted into the Foresight Hall of Fame. Mike initiated The Business Forecasting Deal blog in 2009 to help expose the seamy underbelly of forecasting practice, and to provide practical solutions to its most vexing problems.
SAS Analytics Pro consists of three core elements of the SAS system: Base SAS®, SAS/GRAPH® and SAS/STAT®. The containerized deployment option adds the full selection of SAS/ACCESS engines making it even easier to work with data from virtually any source.
It has been my great pleasure writing this blog for the past 12 years, with over 370 posts. In doing so, I have enjoyed the support of my exceptional SAS managers over this time: From Anne Milley and Renee Nocker way back when it started, to Susan Kahler and David
I've never been much of a fan of forecasting approaches to intermittent demand. In situations like intermittent demand (or other areas where we have little hope of reasonably accurate forecasts), my thinking is "why bother?" If we can't expect to solve the problem with forecasting, we need a different approach.
Following is editor Len Tashman's preview of the 2021-Q4 issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight #63 (2021-Q4) FORESIGHT HALL OF FAME Adopting the idea from other journals that recognize outstanding contributions to the field through best paper awards, we are pleased to announce that
M6 Financial Forecasting Competition The Makridakis Open Forecasting Center has announced the M6 Financial Forecasting Competition, to begin in February 2022. This will be a "live" competition running through February 2023, with a focus on forecasts of stock price (returns) and risk, and on investment decisions based on the forecasts.
SAS Analytics Pro is an easy-to-use, yet powerful package for accessing, manipulating, analyzing and presenting information. It lets organizations improve productivity with all the tools and methods needed for desktop data analysis – in one package.
The International Institute of Forecasters and SAS® are funding two $10,000 grants to support research on forecasting. Per the announcement: For the eighteenth year, the IIF, in collaboration with SAS®, is proud to announce financial support for research on improving forecasting methods and business forecasting practice. The award for this year will be
On September 2 (3pm UTC / 11am EDT), I'll be joining Jonathon Karelse, CEO of NorthFind Management, for an interactive "fireside chat" on the application of Behavioral Economics in demand planning. This is part of the Foresight Webinar Series, and registration is free. Since we first met at an Institute
What makes something easy (or difficult) to forecast? This question was answered by Prof. Rob Hyndman on the Forecasting Impact podcast (February 6, 2021), and it's worth a look at his response. Rob was recently named a Fellow of the International Institute of Forecasters, and is someone who is known
Following is Editor Len Tashman's preview of the new issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight #62 (2021:Q3) This 62nd issue of Foresight has been heavily “infected” by the COVID pandemic. Stephan Kolassa’s book review of Resurrecting Retail by Doug Stephens raises the question of whether the
International Symposium on Forecasting (virtual, June 27 - July 2) The 41st International Symposium on Forecasting will be virtual again this year, and begins Sunday June 27. SAS will have a huge presence -- as event sponsor, sponsor of the IIF/SAS Research Grants, and with 19 individual presentations. ISF registration
I am gratified to see the continuing adoption of Forecast Value Added by organizations worldwide. FVA is an easy to understand and easy to apply approach for identifying bad practices in your forecasting process. And I'm particularly gratified to see coverage of FVA in two new books, which the authors
Last week Len Tashman, Udo Sglavo and I announced release of our new collection: Business Forecasting: The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Today, we share an excerpt from the book, one of the sixteen opinion/editorial "Afterwords" contributed by influential leaders in academics and industry, this one by
With my collaborators Len Tashman (Editor of Foresight) and Udo Sglavo (VP of Analytics R&D at SAS), we are happy to announce the release of our new collection, Business Forecasting: The Emerging Role of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Wiley, 2021). Building upon our previous collection Business Forecasting: Practical Problems and
Following is Editor Len Tashman's preview of the new issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Jonathon Karelse, author of the lead story, will be presenting in the Practitioner Track of the International Symposium on Forecasting (June 27-30). Preview of Foresight #61 (2021:Q2) For many years, we’ve identified
Please join us on Tuesday, March 16 for what should be an exciting discussion on the current challenges and emerging best practices in demand forecasting. I'll be moderating this very distinguished panel: Nicolas Vandeput - supply chain data scientist, specialized in demand forecasting and inventory optimization; author of the book
We learned this week of the passing of one of the giants in our field, Tom Wallace. Tom was as gracious and fine a gentleman as you'll meet. Through his writing, teaching, and consulting work -- in frequent collaboration with Bob Stahl -- tens of thousands of industry practitioners have
Through the M4 and M5 competitions, we've seen the promising performance of machine learning approaches in generating forecasts. The SAS whitepaper "Assisted Demand Planning Using Machine Learning for CPG and Retail" describes a role for ML in augmenting the demand planning by guiding the review and override of statistical forecasts.
We seem to be in the height of webinar season, so please add one more to your calendar, brought to you by SAS, CT Global Solutions, and the International Institute of Forecasters: I'll be delivering a short introduction, covering the disappointing state of real life business forecasting in contrast to
On Friday Nov 27, 2:00pm GMT (9:00am EST in the US), Robert Fildes is presenting his latest research in the webinar "What do we need to know about Forecast Value Added?" This is part of the Lancaster University Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting's "CMAF Friday Forecasting Talks." Here is
Here is the final installment of the 3-part series by guest bloggers Jessica Curtis and Andrea Moore. (If you missed them, here are Part 1 and Part 2). HOW SAS MAKES IT HAPPEN There are two main steps for integrating open source forecasting models into SAS Visual Forecasting, each with increasing
Here is the second installment of the 3-part series by guest bloggers Jessica Curtis and Andrea Moore. (If you missed it, here is Part 1.) THE VALUE SAS DELIVERS TO OPEN SOURCE First and foremost, SAS distributes the input data for forecasting. SAS knows how to split up data intelligently
Welcome to the first of a 3-part series by guest bloggers Jessica Curtis and Andrea Moore: FORECASTING IS UBIQUITOUS Forecasting is core to many different business decisions across virtually every industry. Whether you’re a retailer planning a compelling assortment of SKUs or improving labor planning for distribution centers and stores, or a consumer product goods
Tomorrow we begin a three-part series on how to accelerate open source forecasting with SAS, by guest bloggers (and my colleagues) Jessica Curtis and Andrea Moore. As the popularity of open source forecasting has expanded, so has the ability of SAS to take advantage of open source capabilities. Over the
The practice of business forecasting falls well short of the potential exhibited in academic research and forecasting competitions. Chris Chatfield* noted this in a 1986 editorial in the International Journal of Forecasting, where he called on statisticians to find a better way of communicating the better use of existing methods
After a day out shoveling snow from a freak early September storm, here is editor-in-chief Len Tashman's preview of the Fall 2020 issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight (Fall 2020) The Fall 2020 issue of Foresight—number 59 since inception in 2005—features the final installment of
Congratulations to Rick Wicklin for 10 Years of The Do Loop Rick Wicklin, author of The Do Loop I want to take a moment to congratulate my colleague Rick Wicklin on the 10th Anniversary of his blog, The Do Loop. Rick is Distinguished Researcher in Computational Statistics at SAS, and our
Excerpt from Steve Morlidge's new book Present Sense (Matador, 2019). Part 3: Not Storytellers But Reporters This is not the place to explore the role and ethics of performance reporting in detail, but I think there are at least four key duties. The duty of clarity Performance reports should be
Excerpt adapted from Steve Morlidge's new book Present Sense (Matador, 2019). Part 2: Not Storytellers But Reporters News and Evidence If we ever doubted the importance of having a capability to assimilate mountains of detail, synthesize it and present it in an accessible and balanced way, the storm around the
It's no secret that The BFD is a huge fan of Steve Morlidge. Morlidge has contributed work of fundamental importance to our understanding of the practice of business forecasting. His studies of forecast quality exposed the abysmal nature of the practice, including the startling statistic that perhaps 30-50% of real-life
