We generate a number of sales reports via Notes, and have toyed with the idea of some automated forecasting (all forecasts are currently manually generated with spreadsheets). I have used products in the past such as Demand Solutions, but at this stage this is just an experiment - and cannot afford to spend $500+ which seems to be the mark for professional forecasting. All I really need is some tool (excel sheet, vb control, lotus script code etc) to generate a forecast based on historical numbers.
I can create simple linear regression using known formulae (excel has it built in, I discovered AFTER creating the formulae from scratch. RTFM!), but our data is seasonal - so we need something more complex.
Anybody any experience / ideas / suggestions? I will even write it myself if someone can point me to the appropriate algorithms.
TIA
Tim
Subject: Sales Forecasting…?
While I’m no MS groupie, Excel does a lot of things well. It’s no crime to use what works.
If 'twas me…
I’d use OLE.
Push the data to Excel
Analyze using tools available in Excel.
Build charts,
Add trend lines,
Build Pivot Tables and Pivot Charts (if you didn’t know about regressions, I’m guessing Pivots are new to you - LEARN these things, they are awesome!).
Whatever. Note - Excel does have other ways to plot data - polynomial, exponential, etc - check out the graph trend line options.
Resources to get you started on OLE are all around you.
FAQ of FAQs
OLE FAQ
Sandbox
Search this forum and the 4/5 forum also.
Depending on your level of knowledge, your time frame, you desire to do the work inside, and other factors, the $500 entry price could be cheap compared to what you’ll spend doing the internal development. I usually go for doing it myself just so we have control over the entire environment but I know that philosophy doesn’t work in all places - think about it in your situation.
HTH
Doug
As an alternative, since sales forcasting is really voodoo, just create a spreasheet with some type of level loaded inputs, ramped up for your sales targets, then use a random number generator to get your ‘seasonal’ components, works great! 
Subject: RE: Sales Forecasting…?
Doug
Interesting (yes, I knew about pivot tables, but didn’t know about exponential etc).
By the way, LOL at using random numbers for seasonal - I thought that was the way sales people generated ALL forecasts!
Thanx
Subject: RE: Sales Forecasting…?
Product managers use randominzation. Sales folks use the old ‘pull it out of ’ method… I’ve done both and neither means a thing!
Off topic aside - at one time I worked in sales. For our national meeting, we were told to bring our ‘no s@it’ forcast to the meeting - all details - who would we sell what to and when - expected objections, methods to overcome, the works. When we’d finished the exercise, our manager told us ‘wrong number, guess again’ (seems the forcast had been established some months prior to this exercise and administration was expecting us to come in with a higher number). We played guess the number for the remainder of the day.
Fast forward to the end of the year - our no s@it number was within 5% of what actually happened. If you ASK the people who are in touch with the customer, BELIEVE them and you can PLAN your year, really!
End of off topic.
Best of luck.
Doug