Planning Analytics

As mentioned in Mike McGeein’s recent blog New IBM Planning Analytics Capabilities, Planning Analytics Workspace SC57 includes a new predictive forecasting feature that can help you create more accurate forecasts and improve your forecasting cycles.

Why is predictive forecasting important to you?

This new feature can help you improve your forecasts in the following ways:

 
Accuracy – it uses statistical and predictive analytics to identify and assess trends and seasonality patterns in historic values, greatly improving forecast accuracy.

 
Consistency – it produces dependable forecast values using consistent and transparent algorithms across different areas of the business, regardless of location, assuring that you can trust the forecast.

 
Timeliness – it reduces the time required to produce an accurate forecast, allowing users to focus on process optimization and managing exceptions and making adjustments.

Why is predictive forecasting useful?

Experience has shown significant benefits in applying predictive methods to the forecasting process. This release puts proven methods in the hands of Workspace users, without requiring a data scientist, and guides them towards their proper application.

How does predictive forecasting work in Planning Analytics?

Behind the scenes, eight exponential smoothing algorithms assess the historical values of a product or account; it then applies the algorithm that has the best accuracy and fewest errors to predict a future value.  The algorithms are embedded directly into Planning Analytics Workspace so, instead of sending your data to algorithms in external solutions, this new feature brings the algorithms to your data! The algorithms are optimized for Planning Analytics, creating a truly integrated and performant experience for users.

I hope this helps you understand more about the new predictive forecasting feature in Planning Analytics Workspace.  If you have any questions or wish to discuss further, please leave a comment in the Community and I’ll be happy to respond. I will also be publishing a mailbag blog in the near future.

I look forward to hearing from you!