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Introduction to Practical ForecastingThis site
is structured to quickly provide busy business leaders with an
introduction to key forecasting tips, techniques, and
strategies.
There are some great forecasting tools available
now, and many books and in-depth articles have been written on the
subject. Forecasting classes are also available. But if you are busy
and just need a simple forecast of your profitability, or your
expenses, or your sales, etc., these resources may be beyond your
time and interest. Or, maybe someone else is doing the forecasting,
but you'd like to have more information about appropriate techniques
and strategies. If so, this website was created for you. The
techniques are simple (very limited statistics, and only when
necessary) and visual where possible.
Two overriding goals
will drive this site:
- Provide tools, techniques and strategies that are easy for
busy executives, managers and owners to use, and
- Make it easy to explain the results to others. (If you have
the best technique in the world but couldn't explain it to your
boss, your banker, your board, your employees, etc. -- how useful
is it?)
This site is designed for someone that doesn't do
forecasting as a full-time job. If that is your job, this
website can still provide some good techniques, some good ideas to
help you deal with a difficult problem, and some appropriate
references if you want to go deeper into a subject. And by the way,
regardless of your job or goal, many of the fundamentals discussed
in this website are critical no matter which high-powered tools you
might decide to apply to the problem. So these fundamentals might be
useful even if you know you need something more powerful.
In
the interest of getting practical in a hurry, the site starts with
our own Laws
of Forecasting. This is a light start to the subject, and
hopefully can challenge you to think differently about certain
aspects of forecasting, aspects which are especially important for
managers. Links are provided within the page for more detail about
each of the laws.
Next is a section on Strategy (link). The
section on Laws is primarily focused on constraints, cautions, and
limitations on forecasting. The strategy section is constructed to
be a guide to how to do it right. This is very important material,
regardless of which tools are used.
With the framework of the
constraints and strategy established, the site then moves to tools,
beginning with the simplest and moving to an introduction to the
most sophisticated. (This material will be added in the future, so
check back often!)
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