In this ever-evolving world, the landscape of business is also updating at a very rapid pace. You need to make every decision by keeping the advancement, innovations, and future events in mind along with the basic business things. Data-driven and informed decisions are very crucial to take your business to the heights of glory and success. Demand forecasting will do an excellent job of assisting you with this information decision-making.
In demand forecasting, you have to predict the sales of your company in the upcoming days. You will be able to predict whether the upcoming months are peak or off-season for a specific product. Apart from that, you will get an idea about the customer demands as well. Knowing their demand, you will be able to plan and manage things accordingly. In today’s post, we will delve into the details of demand forecasting models.
Demand Forecasting Models
Demand forecasting models are used to predict the future sales of your company or organization. These models are based on historical data you have, market trends, seasonality, and internal and external factors. By analysis of historical data and delving into other factors, you can predict the sales of your company.
Demand forecasting models are of different types based on the availability of data and your business requirements. The following section is all about the major demand forecasting models. Let’s get a deeper idea about these models.
Time Series Analysis
This model deals with historical data analysis to predict the future sales of your company. This analysis will help you In predicting the events and trends in the market. Numerous techniques can be used to predict sales using this model. However, the most effective ones are exponential smoothing, and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (simply abbreviated as ARIMA). This model is basically for short-term trends and helps you in predicting seasonality.
Machine Learning Models
The current era has developed a lot in algorithms and machine learning. This model of demand forecasting is based on the same things. It involves algorithms for demand forecasting. Machine learning is very helpful in predicting the future of your company’s sales by even using a smaller amount of data.
Apart from that, this model is specifically designed to handle the complex interaction in the data. Machine learning models can easily be adapted to changing patterns over time. So, you don’t have to look for a new model after changes in the trends.
Deep Learning Models
These models are highly effective for both long-term and short-term data. Long short term memory or simply LSTM is the key technique used in this model. You can rely on it for demand forecasting if you want a much deeper analysis of the data.
This model revolves around the time series data, analyze it, and captures sequential dependencies. You can opt for this model if you have a lot of long-term data with irregular patterns as these models are excellent in analyzing such types of data.
Causal Models
It is rated as the most sophisticated type of demand forecasting model or tool. This model incorporates several external factors that can impact the sales of your company in the future. The major factors include economic indicators, social trends, market trends, customer interest, marketing campaigns, and advertisements.
This model provides a more holistic understanding of the demand drivers. It uses mathematical expressions to represent causal relationships. Apart from that, it also includes pipeline considerations and information you get from market surveys. It can also interact with other models. For example, you can incorporate the results of time series data by using the causal model.
Hybrid Models
It is not a specific model. It’s clear from its name that such models are a combination of two or more demand forecasting models. These. models help you effectively get the strengths of different models and then combine them to get more accurate results. For example, you can combine a time series model to get data and then machine learning to account for external factors.
Bottom Line
You can use any of the above models or simply combine them to get demand forecasts. Doing so will improve your warehouse management system, supply chain, and order fulfillment. In short, demand forecasting can help you in improving your overall business.