Black Box Intelligence

The process of economic forecasting is at heart the process of attempting to predict the future of an economy. Generally this refers to the economy of a country, but it may also refer to municipalities within a state.

Most employees do not feel engaged or motivated at work.  To deal with this issue, many companies are turning to data-driven solutions like AI machine learning models.

AI has been used to improve supply chain and demand forecasting for a couple of decades. Demand planning applications use data driven algorithms to take historical data and use it to forecast. Demand forecasting can include promotion planning or stock and sales forecasting. The machine looks at the forecast, compares it to actual shipments, and suggests alternatives and optimization options. Over time, many companies started doing more specific forecasting for specific regions, products or stores or for more granular points in time. Both retailers and their suppliers (CPG companies or 3rd party shipping and supply chain companies) use their data to help conduct automated decision making within the supply chain.

In today’s global economy, supply chains include numerous partners, with services and sourcing managed across several organizations and in jurisdictions across the world. Corporations are increasing their use of third-party suppliers in the execution of key strategic imperatives and these third-party operations are becoming larger and more complicated as time goes on. Businesses should upgrade their risk management framework if they don’t want to miss potential profits and saved costs.