Predicting the Future

Management reporting does not have to be solely about what has happened in the past and about what data could be collected at the time because it can also be used for forecasting the future.

Predictive analytics means that Arc extracts information from your data and uses statistical analysis to predict future trends. Accuracy comes not only from the quality of the data, but also in the skill of the analysis.

For example Arc mathematicians modelling sales data for a large multinational company throughout 2010/11 decided to take reporting further than our client imagined. Marketing managers are always pleased to see sales increasing for a product and they carefully watched Arc’s graphs and reporting of trends to understand how successful their products were doing against their competitors. The managers were always delighted to see growth and very happy when trends appeared to show a successful future.

Arc began to investigate the data and found that we could actually identify in advance when the sales of a product were going to start falling weeks before it actually happened. Arc reporting experts could start to tell the client before their competitors knew when a trend was coming to an end. This is an extremely powerful insight and it gave the marketing managers the power to adjust pricing and marketing to extend the run of a product before their rivals.