The Business Forecasting Deal
Exposing bad practices and offering practical solutions in business forecasting
Following is editor-in-chief Len Tashman's preview of the Spring 2020 issue of Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting. Preview of Foresight (Spring 2020) This Spring 2020 issue of Foresight—number 57 since the journal began in 2005— leads off with Associate Editor Mike Gilliland’s discussion of The M4 Forecasting Competition:
Forecasting During Chaos The Institute of Business Forecasting has produced an 80-minute virtual town hall on "Forecasting & Planning During the Chaos of a Global Pandemic." The on-demand video recording is available now and well worth a look. There is much solid practical guidance from an experienced panel: Eric Wilson,
Fildes and Goodwin (F&G) observed the subject (the regional subsidiary of a pharmaceutical company) was using a statistical forecasting system, but not fully trusting its output. Forecasters were making overrides to the system generated forecast to make it look like what they believed it should (e.g., following a life-cycle curve
Two weeks ago we looked at the first two steps in effecting forecasting process change: Justify your suspicions with data Communicate your findings That was the easy part. So why is it that so many organization realize they have a forecasting problem, yet are unable to do anything about it?
What if you suspect something is wrong with your forecasting process? What if the process is consuming too much time and too many resources, while still delivering unsatisfactory results (lousy forecasts). What can you do about it? This post looks at the first two steps to effecting meaningful forecasting process
With 2018's M4 Forecasting Competition behind us (although analysis, interpretation, and debate continue), the new M5 Competition starts March 2. Running through June 30, M5 is utilizing actual data provided by Walmart. It will be implemented using Kaggle's Platform, with $100,000 in prize money. Forecasting practitioners are encouraged to participate,