In conjunction with the International Institute of Forecasters and the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University, the 2016 Foresight Practitioner conference will be held in Raleigh, NC (October 5-6, 2016) with the theme of:
Worst Practices in Forecasting:
Today's Mistakes to Tomorrow's Breakthroughs
This is the first ever conference dedicated entirely to the exposition of bad forecasting practices. I am co-chairing the event along with Len Tashman, editor-in-chief of Foresight. Our "worst practices" theme reflects an essential principle:
The greatest leap forward for our forecasting functions lies not in squeezing an extra trickle of accuracy from our methods and procedures, but rather in recognizing and eliminating practices that do more harm than good.
As discussed so many times in this blog, we often shoot ourselves in the foot when it comes to forecasting. We spend vast amounts of time and money building elaborate systems and processes, while almost invariably failing to achieve the level of accuracy desired. Organizational politics and personal agendas contaminate what should be an objective, dispassionate, and largely automated process.
At this conference you'll learn what bad practices to look for at your organization, and how to address them. I'll be delivering the introductory keynote: Worst Practices in Forecasting, and the rest of the speaker lineup already includes:
- Len Tashman - Foresight Founding Editor and Director of the Center for Business Forecasting: Forecast Accuracy Measurement: Pitfalls to Avoid, Practices to Adopt.
- Paul Goodwin, coauthor of Decision Analysis for Management Judgment and Professor Emeritus of Management Science, University of Bath: Use and Abuse of Judgmental Overrides to Statistical Forecasts.
- Chris Gray - coauthor of Sales & Operations Planning - Best Practices: Lessons Learned and principal of Partners for Excellence: Worst Practices in S&OP and Demand Planning.
- Steve Morlidge - coauthor of Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting and former Finance Director at Unilever: Assessing Forecastability and Properly Benchmarking.
- Wallace DeMent - Demand Planning Manage at Pepsi Bottling, responsible for forecast, financial and data analysis: Avoiding Dangers in Sales Force Input to the Forecasts.
- Anne Robinson - Executive Director, Supply Chain Strategy and Analytics, Verizon Wireless and 2014 President of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS): Forecasting and Inventory Optimization: A Perfect Match.
- Erin Marchant - Senior Analyst in Global Demand Management, Moen: Worst Practices in Forecasting Software Implementation.
Stay tuned to the Foresight website for forthcoming specifics on registration, sponsorship, and a detailed agenda.
About the Conference Hosts
Founded in 2007, the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University prepares practitioners of analytics for leadership roles in our digital world. Its flagship program is the Master of Science in Analytics (MSA), which covers a wide spectrum of skills including data management and quality, mathematical and statistical methods for data modeling, and techniques for visualizing data in support of enterprise-wide decision making.
Now celebrating its 10th anniversary of publication, Foresight: The International Journal of Applied Forecasting is the practitioner journal of the nonprofit International Institute of Forecasters (IIF), a cross-disciplinary institute including analysts, planners, managers, scholars, and students across business, economics, statistics, and other related fields. Through its journals and conferences, the IIF seeks to advance and improve the practice of forecasting.
