Financial Forecasting

In this hands-on seminar, you’ll delve into the critical components of forecasting and build forecasts that help power the operations, finance, production, and planning functions in your organization.

You’ll master the key components and skills to create forecasts and learn to translate and appraise the forecasts of others. In addition, you’ll understand how to interpret the meaning of any forecast, whether it’s your own company’s or that of the competition. Whether you’re new or seasoned in forecasting and in need of a briskly paced refresher, this seminar will help you see into—and plan—your company’s future!

• Gather the basic facts necessary to start building a forecast
• Learn limitations—what forecasts can and cannot do
• Choose the proper forecasting technique given available data and forecast goals
• Critique and interpret forecasts and their implications
• Utilize powerful MS Excel® tools—with uses transferable to other disciplines
• Master and use regression tools to make better forecasts
• Use Excel® tools to present forecast data to executive management

• Introduction to business forecasting
• Basic statistical techniques
• Forecasting techniques and methods
• Getting started: Making underlying assumptions
• Identifying data patterns: Exploratory analysis concepts
• Time series and their components
• The use of Excel® as your forecasting tool
• Forecasting performance measurements
• Simple and multivariate linear regression
• Summarizing and displaying data in Excel®
• New directions in financial forecasting

Learning Objectives

• Identify the Basics of Forecasting
• Describe Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis
• Apply Statistics and Formulas to Forecasting
• Define Data Analysis Using Microsoft® Excel
• Identify Business Forecasts and How They Are Used
• Describe How Probability and Risk Affect Forecasts
• Describe Future Trends in Forecasting