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.
The BFD on RFPs Software selection teams are prone to issuing lengthy requests for information (RFIs) or requests for proposals (RFPs), with page after page of check boxes for so-called requirements. Vendors stay in contention by dutifully checking off each box as either “available now,” “available in next release,” or
When you realize your organization has a forecasting problem, what do you do to solve it? In particular, if you realize you need new forecasting software, how do you begin to find it? All too often, the first step in a software selection process is the Request for Proposal (RFP)
You can still register for the 38th annual International Symposium on Forecasting, being held June 17-20 in Boulder, Colorado, at the foothills of the Rockies. Beyond the daily keynotes and over 150 presentations of new research, a separate Practitioner Track features talks on the application of forecasting research to organizational
Editor-in-Chief Len Tashman's Preview of Foresight The Spring 2018 issue of Foresight—the 49th since our beginning in 2005—opens with a feature section on Supply Chain forecasting. More specifically, it addresses the very critical matter of how a company should determine its service-level targets, or the probability that no shortages occur between the time
SAS Global Forum (Denver, April 8-11) Join over 5000 attendees at the biggest SAS event of the year, and see how SAS is embedding more artificial intelligence and automation into the SAS Platform. See the SAS Forecasting and Econometrics Community for the huge list of forecasting, econometrics, and time series
IBF Free Webinar The Institute of Business Forecasting is offering a free webinar on March 29, 2018: Analytically Speaking: Transforming Forecasting & Demand Planning in a New Era The webinar will be delivered by Chad Schumacher, Senior Director of Global Analytics at Kellogg's, and you can register here. From the
Please join me and my colleague Charlie Chase, for the IBF's Predictive Business Analytics Forecasting & Planning Conference in New Orleans (April 23-25). Charlie and I will be staffing the SAS booth, and available to answer your SAS forecasting questions, or provide a software demonstration. Also, fill out a short
What is Forecast Value Added? Please enhance your Valentine's Day with this treat offered up by the Journal of Business Forecasting. Eric Wilson's very nice discussion of Forecast Value Added, originally published in the Spring 2016 issue of JBF, is now available online: "What is Forecast Value Added?" Eric also
Forecasting Research Survey The Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting at Lancaster University is conducting a new study on how demand forecasters do forecasting. They invite all practitioners who are working with forecasts, such as demand planners and supply managers, to take part in the study. The survey is anonymous
The 38th International Symposium on Forecasting will be held June 17-20 in Boulder, Colorado, USA. Registration is now open. This is the last ISF in North America until at least 2022. The ISF is the premier forecasting event for researchers, with academic attendees from all over the world. Yet it
