Employing information Markets To Achieve Truly collaborative Sales Forecasting

EMPLOYING INFORMATION MARKETS TO ACHIEVE TRULY COLLABORATIVE SALES FORECASTING By Steven Ostrover Describes how and why the use of information markets generates improved sales forecasts … the approach provides a way of aggregating and consolidating the input of all employees dispersed throughout the firm with relevant information … companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Eli Lilly are successfully employing this approach. This article introduces a forecasting approach very different from methods currently employed by most firms. While this new approach is related in some ways to Delphi and various forms of collaborative forecasting, the specific technique employed to accomplish the sharing and coordinating of information that is the primary goal of these approaches is fundamentally different. This new approach employs a market mechanism — an Information Market — to generate forecasts by aggregating and summarizing, more effectively than any alternative method, the knowledge and insights of workers dispersed through firms. Evidence, both experimental and empirical, indicates that such markets provide better forecasts than traditional approaches. And there are additional ...