- Imagine you're getting dressed for work one morning
and you realize that you ran out of deodorant,
so you make a mental note to buy some later in the day,
and you go ahead and get ready.
You step outside and it's a scorcher.
Thankfully, a drone greets you at the door
and drops your trusted antiperspirant right into your hands.
Good timing.
Well, that future may not be far off
with advances in machine learning
to really help us to forecast demand.
Business is about supply and demand.
So the smarter you can be about what your customers need,
and when they'll need it, the better off you'll be
to know when to advertise and by how much.
Enter demand forecasting.
This is just another tool in your quiver
to create greater returns from your marketing investments.
Demand forecasting has always been important,
but its sophistication is changing by leaps and bounds
because of machine learning.
In the retail world, companies like Walmart and Amazon,
they gain an edge by knowing how much inventory to buy
and which products to offer and promote, and at what time.
An industry solutions director at Microsoft
commented that expectations for retail
is shaped by the ease of commerce today.
The ease of search, the ease of access,
the idea of having no lines to have to wait in.
So this means forecasting is more important than ever.
If you're not ready to provide
what your customers are in need of,
then they'll find it from another competitor.
Traditionally, businesses have used
historical data for forecasting.
However, if you get forecasting wrong,
it can really cut into your margins.
This approach in large part
gave way to discount retailers
because an overabundance of inventory
eventually means lower prices
and historical data really only tells part of the story.
Ordering just a little bit less,
or increasing availability just a little bit more,
that can make a huge difference.
What's certain is that you can use machine learning today
to strengthen your understanding
of supply and demand for tomorrow.