Benchmarking Forecasting Software And Systems

BENCHMARKING FORECASTING SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS By Chaman L. Jain, St. John’s University Why do businesses need forecasting software packages and systems? To answer this question, we need to know exactly what such packages and systems are and what they do. Before describing that, it is important to understand the difference between forecasting software packages and forecasting systems. Forecasting software is a stand-alone package which is used to generate forecasts using either a forecaster-selected model or an automatic built-in feature (called expert system). The forecasting system, on the other hand, does more than that. It not only has a forecasting engine to prepare forecasts, but also it automates many of the forecasting processes such as acquiring and transmitting forecast data and information. Most of the forecasting software packages available in the market have an expert system. A package with such a system has an automatic feature that tests a number of forecasting models with the historical data and then prepares forecasts for the next period with a model that, on the average, yields the best results. The criteria used for selecting the best model depend on the type ...