Prediction, Planning and Forecasting

MRS Speaker Evening hosted by ADA. Demonstrating the latest analytical thinking and advances in prediction and forecasting.

On Tuesday 26th November the ADA (Advanced Analytics) Network will host a two hour speaker evening, building on the success of previous sold-out events.

The papers we have selected demonstrate latest thinking and advances in prediction, planning and forecasting. 

• The evening will begin with a presentation from Colin Bunn Founder & MD of Double Spiral Consulting , titled Optimising the impact of promotional activity

This session will outline how Colin helped a client in the FMCG sector to forecast the impact of promotional activity across their entire brand / pack portfolio by key retail customer, identifying where promotional efficiency / ROI could be improved. The client’s key aims were to:

*Move from a volume based measure of effectiveness to a financially based one

*Develop a systemised approach across the whole portfolio and move away from ad-hoc, one-off projects typically focused on a single brand

*Enable promotional plan forecasting and more efficient post-promotional event validation, moving away from a reliance on relatively slow analysis of historical data

Colin will show how this led to a new set of guidelines for future promotional planning, a significant improvement in promotional plan forecasting, and the potential to realise a multi-million £ increase in promotional efficiency.

• This will then be followed by a presentation from Andrew Zelin, Lead Statistician at Ipsos Healthcare, titled Forecasting Incoming Volume into a Call Centre

"All our agents are busy” is a phrase call centre customers dread.  Call centres represent a significant growth area of the world’s economy and are referred to as the “factories of the 21st century”.  Owners need to be able to accurately and reliably forecast how much work they will have on any given day, so that the right number of staff can be at their desks at the right times to take calls. 

In this presentation, Andrew outlines the steps that a planner with a relatively basic understanding of “tried and tested” statistical methods can implement to get this forecast right.

• Finishing with a presentation from Jo Young, Director of R-Cubed, titled An individual approach to accurate media attribution and measurement.

Marketing teams need accurate media measurement to understand how best to split the marketing budget across channels for greatest ROI.  However media reporting is often siloed, taking little or no account of the impact of other channels, such as digital reports which lack offline media activity and sales.  Also these reports can omit insight into the types of customers who are influenced by what media: for example, this insight would help focus pressured acquisition budgets at new-to-brand individuals and not existing customers, who could be more effectively influenced by cheaper direct channels.  

Using individual level online and offline data and combining traditional and innovative analytics methods, Jo will discuss a measurement solution that includes all media and allows transparent and flexible attribution of sales at an individual level, for more effective media planning.

The evening will begin at 5.45pm with networking and drinks and the first presentation to begin at 6pm. The evening will close at 8pm.

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The ADA Network is supported by Bonamy Finch, an analytically-driven insights agency providing advanced analytics, data science and bespoke research solutions.