In this course, you will gain the skills to assess the analytics maturity of client organizations, effectively utilize analytics techniques for forecasting, and identify opportunities for optimization in financial decision-making. We will explore the fundamentals of forecasting, including statistical methods for making and evaluating forecasts. Through practical examples, you will learn how to forecast staffing needs for an office, predict product revenue in complex time series, and employ CART trees for market segmentation when dealing with nonlinear targets. This course is part of a training series that introduces CPAs and financial professionals to descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics, covering analytics benchmarking, forecasting methods, and optimization for decision-making in capital investment and inventory management.
Learning Objectives
- Determine the level of analytics maturity of a client organization
- Recognize how to make and evaluate a forecast using analytics techniques
- Identify when optimization techniques can improve financial decision-making
Major Topics
- What is forecasting?
- How to make and evaluate a forecast statistically
- Forecasting a simple time series: staffing an office
- Forecasting a more complex time series: product revenue forecasting
- Forecasting a nonlinear target: CART trees for market segmentation
