BFO-701: BUSINESS FORECASTING
OVERVIEW
For the final project, you will create and execute a forecasting plan for an organization of your choice. The purpose of the plan is to synthesize the concepts from the course. The project requires that you create a forecast for sales, budget, future events, or any other information that is used to make a business decision. You will be applying the information from your previous assignments to a practical forecasting situation.
Consider using a current or past situation in your organization where you are now or were previously employed. Or consider a potential business that you may want to start. Find a decision that could be helped by information that a forecast can provide. Choose the forecasting technique you think will best provide that information. Then, create and execute your forecasting plan. Explain, in detail, how you developed and implemented your forecast and how that information could help the organization make the decision you have chosen. Be as specific as possible explaining the forecasting technique you would use and why it applies to your scenario.
GENERAL PLAN
Write a paper that creates a forecasting plan for the organization you work for or another organization with which you are familiar. You will choose one of the forecasting tools discussed in the course to forecast the company’s sales, overall budget, or some other significant metric for the company. Ideally, the data would be real from the company, but if the information is not available, information can be estimated. Alternatively, you can create a plan for a business that you may want to start.
The forecasting paper should include the following:
Analyze the current situation. What is the business for which you are making your forecast? How will the forecast you are creating help the business? For what metric will you create a forecast? Why is it important? Why does a forecast need to be done? What do you know about this so far? How is it being measured?
What forecasting tool will you use? Which of the forecasting tool(s) in the course can be applied to the company and the metric you want to measure? Explain why you think this forecasting tool makes sense.
Apply the tool. Use the chosen tool to create a forecast for the project. Use real data if it is available; create data if the real data is not available.
Analyze the results. What do the results mean to the organization? How can the organization use this information to make better decisions? What do the results mean about the organization? What recommendations would you make to the organization based on the results?
Analyze the process. If you were going to do the project over, what would you do differently? What worked well? What did not work well?
