Enable forecasting for global markets across regions
The Big Picture
The global analytics team of a large manufacturer of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and consumer packaged goods was developing global-scale country-category forecasts using syndicated data sources. They wanted to build automated forecasting solutions for generating forecast numbers across 450+ country-category combinations of value and volume. To get a holistic view of the numbers, country, regional, and business heads were to consume the output of such forecasts through dashboards and presentations.
Transformative Solution
The company leveraged Fractal’s Centralized Analytics Environment (CAE) to successfully deliver a market-size forecasting solution across 450+ country-category combinations in 90 countries. To achieve this, the following CAE modules were implemented:
- Data processing: Fractal used its business and market understanding to harmonize the data for all combinations and mapped the external factors that may impact forecasts. This harmonized data was put together from multiple data sources.
- Data modeling: Using its proprietary forecasting solution, Autocast, Fractal deployed multiple time series based statistical models to generate multiple forecasts and selected the best fit model output.
- Validation checks: Fractal carried out validation checks on the statistical model outputs using business rules and market understanding to confirm the validity of the outputs.
- Business consumption: The finalized category forecasts were shared with business stakeholders through a Tableau dashboard.
The Change
The CAE provided the client with the following insights and forecasts for the next two years for all global markets across regions:
- Actual historical values compared with model forecast outputs across categories, country, and region.
- Monthly and quarterly forecasts with year-on-year growth rates.
- dentification of non-performing markets.
- Monitoring price of the market vis-à-vis the sales value.
The company also benefited from using these technologies:
- Autocast was leveraged to build the market-size forecasting solution.
- Tableau visualization provided a holistic view to stakeholders on market performance and enabled better consumption of the output.