The Volume Forecast

The Volume Forecast Intervals engine, when configured, enables the volume forecast to make predictions based on fifteen minute intervals. The Forecast Planner predicts weekly business volumes by day of the week and the volume forecast intervals engine distributes the daily prediction into predictions by fifteen minutes.

The volume forecast intervals is based on Traffic Pattern engine input and the following settings:

• Business Structure attribute — Generate Volume Intervals (in Forecast Attributes) is checked.
• Function Access Control Point — Volume Forecast Intervals (in Access Profiles > Function Access Profiles > Manager - Department Manager ACPs) is set to allowed.

The volume forecast interval can be edited, and the edited value can be used to generate the labor forecast instead of using daily predictions and Traffic Pattern engine input.

Note: The grid or table view of Actual Volume always shows only 15-minute intervals. However in Forecast Home, you can show any configured interval in the Daily Volume Details.

To generate the volume forecast using the Volume Forecast Intervals engine, access the Volume Workspace from the Forecast Planner.

Business drivers help to forecast future business volume and labor requirements. A driver is any item or unit that can be measured and tracked. Volume drivers are the source of the volume forecast.

Volume Drivers use actual site recorded data — such as POS data, patient census data, devices that count the number of customers entering a stores, pallets and cartons, and so on — to track units that vary according to the volume of the organization's business; for example:

• Sales dollars
• Number of customers
• Patients
• Number of items sold
• Number of transactions by cash, check, credit card, and so on

Dependent drivers are affected by changes to the other dependent drivers in a forecast category. If you edit the volume forecast for a dependent driver, the system updates the volume forecast for the other dependent drivers by the same percent. Non-dependent drivers, by contrast, are not affected by changes to any other drivers.

For example, if Sales, Items, and Customers are dependent volume drivers, then if you edit the number of forecasted sales for the bakery, the system changes the forecasted number for customers and items for the bakery accordingly. These new totals are rolled up into the categories above the bakery; for example, to the store. One driver can be used again and again in different categories. For example, the business driver Customers can be defined once and then used for all appropriate forecast categories.

Special events, such as sales promotions, changing seasons, public health emergencies, and snow storms, have an impact on the volume forecast. Special event markers indicate days with volume that is probably out of the normal day-to-day range. When the Forecast Planner encounters a special event, it calculates the percent impact of the event and compensates for the impact when it generates the forecast.

Adding special events is a way to fine-tune the forecast by layering the trends from past events with current trends.

For example, some holidays fall in a different week each year. When determining the effect of those holidays, the Forecast Planner looks back to dates marked with the name of the event, because it cannot rely on information from the current date of the holiday.

Another example is forecasting the day after a holiday. A given holiday may have an impact beyond the day itself. The Forecast Planner goes back to actual day-after-the holiday data, rather than relying solely on data from any Friday in the past.

The Forecast Planner can also dismiss data for anomalies, such as storms, when volume is absent or extremely high or extremely low.

You can designate a special event as Seasonal; in this case, the event impacts only the traffic pattern, and not business volume.

For details, see Special Events