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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!
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Forecasting 101: How to Forecast Data Containing Unusual Demand Periods
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Preparing forecasts using data that contains one or more unusually large or small demand periods can be challenging. Depending on your forecasting approach, these "outliers" can have a significant impact on your forecasts. This article surveys three different approaches to forecasting data containing unusual demand periods, discusses the pros and cons of each and makes recommendations about when it is best to use each approach.
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Trends 30-Second Survey Results: What is the Scale of Your Forecasting Process?
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The last issue of Trends featured a 30-Second Survey on scale in the forecasting process. Although many planning processes focus on the aggregate view of the business—for instance, Sales & Operations Planning centers on product groups or families—demand planners are usually required to work at the item level. Some are even required to work at a more granular level, for example, at an item-by-customer level or in weekly time buckets rather than monthly. In this issue we present results on the level of detail at which forecasters work, and the impact of scale on the forecasting process.
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Free Webinar on Getting Good Forecasts from Bad Data
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Inevitably, forecasters deal with less-than-perfect data, given common challenges such as: data collection problems; data storage issues; poorly-documented marketing and pricing programs; and operational challenges. Join us for a free live educational Webinar on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 1:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time) as Ellen Bonnell, CEO of Trends Savants, presents "How to Get Good Forecasts from Bad Data". In the webinar, Ellen will share seven guiding principles for forecasting with bad data, and demonstrate practical solutions for addressing this pervasive problem.
Click here to register...
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Forecast Pro Tips & Tricks: ABC Classification
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ABC classification, also known as Pareto analysis, is a useful method used to classify forecast items according to their relative importance to the organization. Typically, important high volume items are categorized as type "A", medium volume items are categorized as type "B" and slow moving items are categorized as type "C". Many organizations adopt different procedures for creating, reviewing and monitoring their forecasts based upon the codes.
Forecast Pro TRAC can automatically assign items into ABC categories based upon their volume. Alternatively, you can create a custom filter to define your own classifications. In this edition of Tips and Tricks, we will explore both approaches and also illustrate how sorting and filtering reports on the Pareto output can be extremely useful.
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Lighter Side
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"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect."
-Oscar Wilde
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