The Business Forecasting Deal
Exposing bad practices and offering practical solutions in business forecasting
Good Judgment® Open Ever wondered how good you are at forecasting? As a business forecaster, you can do the usual comparison against a naive model (and hopefully you are beating it!). You might also compare your forecast accuracy to published industry benchmarks -- although I would strongly recommend against this.
To make it easy to identify non-value adding areas, you can build a simple application using SAS® Visual Analytics software. Such an application lets you point and click your way through the organization’s forecasting hierarchy, and at each point view performance of the Naïve, Manual, Statistical, and Automated forecasts (or
To properly evaluate (and improve) forecasting performance, we recommend our customers use a methodology called Forecast Value Added (FVA) analysis. FVA lets you identify forecasting process waste (activities that are failing to improve the forecast, or are even making it worse). The objective is to help the organization generate forecasts
Preview of the Winter 2017 issue of Foresight Foresight begins the new year with our 44th issue since the journal began publishing in 2005, and in this Winter 2017 collection we’re showcasing a broad range of incisive and entertaining pieces. We’re looking at new research on the effectiveness of collaboration
Aphorism 6: The Surest Way to Get a Better Forecast is to Make the Demand Forecastable Forecast accuracy is largely dependent on volatility of demand, and demand variation is affected by our own organizational policies and practices. So an underused yet highly effective solution to the forecasting problem can be
Aphorism 3: Organizational Policies and Politics Can Have a Significant Impact on Forecasting Effectiveness We just saw how demand volatility reduces forecastability. Yet our sales, marketing, and financial incentives are usually designed to add volatility. We reward sales spikes and record weeks, rather than smooth, stable, predictable growth. The forecast