Sales forecasting with limited resources: Part 1

Most marketing executives would accept that one of the most significant activities in management planning and control is that of attempting to predict future sales. In Part One Nigel Piercy justifies the importance which marketing analysts attach to sales prediction and examines the role of forecasting within a distributive organisation. Special attention is given to the problems of attempting to forecast sales in situations where there are no facilities for sophisticated methods. This is particularly relevant to the smaller distributive firm, but also applies to the small unit manager who does not have access to centralised resources, who has little time available for analysing sales figures or using marketing research, for whom, however, short‐term forecasting tends to be of vital importance. Part Two, which will appear in the next issue of RDM, will review some of the alternative methods of forecasting and where they should be used, and will include a practical model of the time series analysis.