6. Demand Forecasting Systems

Up until 25 years ago or so, forecasting was kind of the “red-headed stepchild” that no one wanted to take ownership of. I believe that had a lot to do with the fact that as forecasting basically tries to predict the future, there was (and still is, to some extent) an air of mystery surrounding it. In many cases this led to separate and somewhat disconnected processes and systems for forecasting.

Marketing and sales would forecast dollars by product (sometimes by customer) and brand at least at an aggregate for budgeting and planning purposes, but these numbers tended to be updated only quarterly at most, thus becoming “stale,” and were not truly statistically based (and in the case of sales, they were highly opinion ...

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