Retailers are under unprecedented pressure to plan and execute inventory across the business in a rapidly changing environment. Forecasting consumer demand is a key step in anticipating inventory need in the business. Building an accurate consumer demand forecast is not easy however, especially when historical data has little similarity to demand impacted by COVID lockdowns. In the event that forecasting is produced based in 2018 and 2019 historical data, it is important to heavily factor in 2020 and 2021 since historical sales profile curves will likely look radically different from 2019 to 2020 due to the dramatic impact of COVID lockdowns on retail results world-wide.
We have designed our consumer demand forecast service to provide retailers with the insight and information needed to make educated decisions when planning inventory short term (3-5 months) and long term (12+ months).
Our service is quick to launch (4-8 weeks) and provides updated demand forecast refined on a weekly basis into a short and long term horizon. All we need from our retailer client is an initial 2 year sales history followed by weekly sharing of sales data. During the initial historical sales data load and during the weekly updates, our team follows up on open questions with the retailer business team to ensure that data is correct and validated. Future events such as future promotions and store closures are also shared and discussed.
Our service is built on a subscription model: it does not require costly solution selection or building and training a team to operate a solution. In a short time and without heavy investment, retailers benefit from a scientifically produced and continuously controlled demand forecast.
Demand forecast have multiple benefits: they can be used to drive merchandise financial planning, assortment planning, allocation, replenishment and even pricing decisions. Our service considers product and location attributes, new item/location mappings, long and short lifecycle products, floating event management (Easter, promotions etc.) and retail price.
Try our service against your current demand forecasts: contact us to conduct a trial with our service teams. You only have to share historical sales data and review with our team any open questions. After that, we send you a trial forecast and you can measure its accuracy against actual sales data.