State of Data Infographic 1

Inventory cost and more predictability are the goals of better forecasting

Poor demand forecasting often results in retailers and manufacturers disappointing customers, bleeding profits, and losing market shares to competitors more in tune with the market’s preferences and buying patterns.

‍

Businesses need data to make accurate and realistic predictions. But collecting data in itself is a big job, and once you do have access to big data, utilizing the information – deciding what is relevant, sifting through a large amount of data, converting and unifying data from diverse sources – requires even more resources:

‍

• Reliable and secure databases for storage
• Data management specialists who organize data to be readily available when needed
• Expert analysts who extract actionable information from all data
• Supply chain demand forecasting experts who steer the organization away from activities that will produce little to zero returns in the future
• Tools and software the organization can use to collect and log market data for future use

‍