How to FORECAST your Business Activities

Supply chains are rarely aligned to support the business strategy.

Functional teams often have competing priorities, of supply and demand. The result can be lost sales, write-downs and discounts, the additional cost to ship and warehouse excess inventory and obsolete stock.

To address this, this workshop is designed to help you produce realistic forecasts. You will develop practical forecasting skills within the context of your professional practice. You will gain a  more professional approach to forecasting - incorporating better planning,  analysis and interpretation. The course will give you increased confidence in the forecasts created and ultimately the performance delivered. 

More effective forecasting can help your organisation to achieve better customer service at a lower cost and with less working capital. Better forecasts lead directly to improvements in availability of stock or service resources and reductions in obsolescence.

 A win – win for your company and your supply chain.

This course is designed for:  Analysts, Managers, and Executives who may be working in the following functions:

• Demand Planning
• Sales & Operations Planning
• Sales, Business Development, and Marketing
• Product Management
• Finance
• Strategic Planning
• Operations
• Supply Chain Functions
• Inventory Management
• Procurement and Buying

By the end of this course participants will be able to:

• automatically create custom forecast models
• identify series that do not have acceptable forecast accuracy
• refine forecast models to improve forecast accuracy
• generate forecast data sets for deployment
• accommodate data updates in large-scale time series data sets.

Topics covered in this course include:

• Why forecasts are necessary
• Simple statistical techniques
• Subjective versus objective forecasting
• Advanced techniques
• Causal model
• Product segmentation for efficient forecasting
• The forecasting process
• How to improve forecast accuracy