Top 8 reasons why sales forecasting doesn't work
Geoffrey James has a very interesting post where he points out the top 8 reasons why sales forecasting doesn’t work. In a nutshell, manual sales forecasts are quite subjective, and the more experts you pile up (especially if they happen to have different agendas), the more random the forecasts become.
In order to avoid the pitfall of manual forecasting, G. James suggests hiring a mathematician to build a computerized forecasting model. Yet, this approach has a major drawback: you need to recruit an excellent mathematician (or more precisely a data miner for that matter).
Indeed, in order to do that, you must overcome two large obstacles
- distinguish the good mathematician from the not-so-good mathematician.
- motivate the mathematician to join your company.
Paying an extra salary might be an issue also, but most probably, it’s a small issue compared to those two problems. In my experience, non-tech-oriented large companies usually fail dramatically at those two issues. This is not very surprising considering the tremendous difficulties encountered by attractive tech-oriented companies in recruiting talented people.
Thus, if you do not happen to be a large tech-oriented company, Lokad might represent a low-cost outsourced mathematician: much cheaper and hassle-free.
