Forecasting

Definition: The process of analyzing current and historical data to determine future trends.

Forecasting is the aspect of planning where the business looks at historical data, as well as industry data and determines what the future will look like.

This is an annual process that all corporations - big and small - go through. Many corporations also “Re-Forecast” quarterly, or even monthly, as this predicting the future is tricky and those predictions tend to change. This process is generally done at a very high level with little detail, as the time it takes to update the data becomes prohibitive for purposes of re-forecasting.

However, this is a primary reason that
forecasts tend to be so innacurate!
 

Issues with forecasting:

• Not interactive – generally done at a corporate level with little input from the field

• Done at a very high level due to time/data constraints

• Wild variations in accuracy. Generally even when a company is “in-line” with their forecast, there are still huge variations, some things coming in that were not supposed to, others missing when they should not have.

has shown it’s customers how to forecast at a level of detail that makes sense, leveraging cutting edge OLAP technologies to make those models fast and efficient. Additionally, by leveraging best practice forecasting methods, we have been able to help our customers forecast more accurately then ever before!