Special Feature Preview

This issue opens with Bahman Rostami-Tabar and Michael Gilliland’s preview of a special feature that Foresight will publish in 2025: “Alliance or Apathy? Forecasting’s Role in Achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.” It looks at how forecasting will support the goals the United Nations outlined in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Special Feature ~ Forecasting Performance Objectives and Commentaries

Malte Tichy provides the lead article “Forecasting Performance Objectives: Scaling-Aware Forecast Rating,” sharing a novel approach to assessing forecast quality with an emphasis on the importance of an item’s sales velocity since slow-movers naturally come with larger relative error than fast-movers. Stefan de Kok, Tim Januschowski, and Zabiulla Mohammed provide commentaries.

Practitioner’s Corner

Patrick Bower shares his experience setting accuracy expectations from the practitioner perspective in his article “How Do I Set Forecast Accuracy Expectations?”.

Hot New Research

In his article “Information that Can Damage Your Demand Forecasts,” Paul Goodwin discusses how certain factors can bias a forecast and lessen accuracy, and he provides a possible solution: restricting the information provided by forecasting software.

Forecasting Practice

Johann Robette shows how Ceiling Analysis lets forecasters assess their portfolio from the perspective of business value, and then determine whether further accuracy enhancements are worthwhile in “Forecast Desirability: Is Better the Enemy of Good?” Then, Ivan Svetunkov reviews the alternatives to point forecast evaluation in his article “Point Forecast Evaluation: State of the Art.”

Tutorial

Ken Fordyce discusses multiple linear regression in Part 3 of his tutorial series “Linear Regression with a Time Series View.”

Decision Intelligence

In his piece “Decision Intelligence: A Critical Reflection,” Roger Moser provides guidance for applying DI’s data-to-action process to improve decision-making.

Spotlight

Marina Sologubova, Senior Director overseeing APAC Demand Planning and IBP at Estée Lauder, talks about her forecasting background, her current leadership role, involvement with the IIF and Foresight, and how she spends her free time.

Opinion-Editorial

In his op-ed “A Planner-centric Approach to Judgmental Forecasting,” Niels van Hove argues for using human-centric design when developing processes and systems, particularly for judgmental forecasting.

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