Benchmarking Forecasting Software and Systems

BENCHMARKING FORECASTING SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS By Chaman L. Jain, St. John’s University In this age and time, it is extremely difficult to work without a forecasting software and/or system, particularly where a forecaster has to prepare forecasts of thousands and thousands of SKUs, broken down by regions, distribution centers, trade channels such as food and drug stores, and customers. Globalization has further added to the burden of a forecaster. In some companies, the forecaster is expected to prepare forecasts for both domestic and foreign markets. Fortunately, in recent years, a number of forecasting software and systems have come to the market, which have helped forecasters to do their job efficiently and in a timely manner. Before proceeding further, it is important to know the difference between a forecasting software and a forecasting system. Forecasting software is a standalone package, which generates forecasts either by the model selected by a forecaster or by the automatic feature (often called expert system) built in the software package. Software with an automatic feature tests a number of forecasting models with the historical data, and then prepares forecasts with ...