Welcome
Welcome to Trends, the e-newsletter from Business Forecast Systems. Trends puts more than two decades worth of forecasting knowledge, experience and expertise at your fingertips every other month. Watch this space for tips & techniques, information & insight, observations & opinions and more. Thanks for reading!

Free Webinar on Forecasting a Product Hierarchy

We are pleased to announce a free educational Webinar on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 2 pm EDT entitled "Considerations for Effectively Forecasting a Product Hierarchy." Many organizations require a consistent set of forecasts across product and/or geographical hierarchies, causing forecasters to grapple with a host of daunting issues. This session will compare and contrast different forecasting strategies for addressing these challenges, emphasizing best practices.

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Trends 30-Second Survey: New Product Forecasting

New product forecasting continues to be a critical topic for forecasters across a wide range of industries. This installment of the Trends "30-Second Survey" seeks insights as to the methods and tools companies use for new product forecasting, and whether the forecasting approach employed differs depending new product classification. All responses are anonymous and results will be reported in the next issue of Trends.

Click here to take the survey

Forecast Pro Tips & Tricks:
Exception Reporting in Forecast Pro TRAC (part 2)

Forecast Pro TRAC provides a wide array of exception reports, including reports which monitor your archived forecasts (i.e., previously created and saved forecasts) and reports which monitor your current forecasts (i.e., the forecasts you are working with but haven’t yet finalized). Exception reports enable you to quickly find cases where key performance metrics have fallen outside of an acceptable range. In the last installment of Forecast Pro Tips & Tricks we detailed how to create the Waterfall Exception Report to monitor archived forecasts. In this installment we look at the Forecasts vs. History Exception Report which is one of the reports available to monitor current forecasts.

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Lighter Side

It is best to read the weather forecast before praying for rain

- Mark Twain

Forecasting Webinar

Trends 30-Second Survey

Forecast Pro Tips & Tricks

Lighter Side

Forecast Pro Training
Product training workshops teach you how to use Forecast Pro most effectively.

Forecast Pro Unlimited Training
November 8-9, 2010
Phoenix, Arizona USA

Forecast Pro TRAC Training
November 10, 2010
Phoenix, Arizona USA

Forecasting Seminar
This comprehensive course covers all aspects of business forecasting.

Forecasting Seminar
September 20-22, 2010
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Forecasting Seminar
October 18-20, 2010
London, UK

Webinar

Considerations for Effectively Forecasting a Product Hierarchy
July 21, 2010
2:00 PM EDT

Forecast Pro Appearances
Look for Forecast Pro at the following events.

IBF/APICS Best of the Best S&OP Conference
June 17-18,2010
Chicago, Illinois USA

30th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting
June 20-23, 2010
San Diego, California USA

IBF Demand Planning & Forecasting Tutorial
August 16-17, 2010
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Epicor Perspectives Global User Conference
October 10-13, 2010
Orlando, Florida USA

IBF Supply Chain Planning & Forecasting: Best Practices Conference
October 25-26, 2010
Orlando, Florida USA