Answers to Your Forecasting Questions

answers to your forecasting questions q. The salary benchmarks provided in the Journal list salaries for Forecast Analyst, Senior Forecast Analyst, Forecast Manager, etc. Does the scope of positions differ depending on the size of a company and industry? Do you have a sense for a typical scope (number of SKUs handled, etc.) and perhaps process responsibilities for each of these positions? We have 50 million SKUs and forecast at the store/ item level. Jeff Ziegler—Lowe’s Companies, Inc. a. The salaries given in the Journal are averages of all the industries combined. The companies that participate in the survey are mostly large and upper-middlesize companies. In fact, most of the small companies don’t have a forecasting function in place. I don’t have any information on process responsibilities for each of these positions, but I can give you how many SKUs a forecaster manages. Theoretically, how many SKUs a forecaster can manage depends on how much forecast error a company can tolerate; how difficult and easy is to forecast; at what level of aggregation forecasts are prepared; and type of technology available to gather and analyze data, and prepare forecasts; and number ...