Trade Promotion Forecasting

Forecasting the impact or “lift” of promotions relative to a baseline forecast remains one of the most challenging problems in demand-driven planning. Running promotions can be expensive, estimated at as much as 12-15% of gross revenues for some businesses. Forecasting promotions are time consuming and difficult due to a large number of variables with complex interactions that are buried in huge amounts of data; with a high degree of noise. Even with considerable expertise, it is usually not feasible to understand correlations among the variables involved.

Optilon uses powerful machine learning technology, providing significant benefits to more traditional methods. Getting access to structured promotion data is key for modeling demand uplift. We have seen examples of a 20% reduction in forecast error, 30% reduction in lost sales, and a 30% reduction in obsolescence, among companies using this technology.

Learn more about our offerings in Service Optimization.