Forecasting & Supply Chain Services

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Products with short life cycles and long supply chains, such as fashion apparel, footwear, or consumerelectronics pose special challenges in forecasting and inventory  management.  Research Boston's principals have been active in this field as consultants and writers for more than 25 years. In fact, one of our consultants developed the Harvard Business School’s course in business forecasting.  We have special depth in catalog and Internet retailing, where customers' high expectations for being in-stock add extra pressure on supply chain management.

 

Example services for clients with short-life products include:

• Assessments – reviewing all of a company’s forecasting and inventory management practices to identify areas for improvement.
  
  

• Finding new ways to get advance market feedback on new products prior to launch.
  
  

• Developing custom forecast models, for example:
  - what-if models to evaluate the demand impact of catalog characteristics.
  - predicting store-by-store acceptance of a new product concept.
  - interpreting out-of-season apparel tests to predict in-season demand.
  
  

• Revamping clients' "inventory coverage" models, to better balance the risks between having too little or too much inventory.

  
  

• Creating new ways to improve the reliability of pre-season (or pre-launch) judgmental forecasts, as a basis for initial factory commitments.

  
  

• Getting full value from IT investments.  Supply-chain software by itself seldom produces much new profit.  We help companies reap true benefits, by helping them think carefully about what to forecast, tune the many curves and parameters in their software, fill gaps in their automation, and often, change related business practices.