Overview
This document is intended to make clear the changes applied to improve the accuracy of the system-generated forecast over the Christmas 2017 period for organisations using Fourth’s Labour Productivity module.
The Change
A function known as ‘Notable Days’ allows the tagging of particular days where an equivalent last year’s date has been identified as giving a stronger indication of the sales behaviour than when using the ‘normal’ system forecasting method. It is designed to remove anomalies and give calculated weighting to trends occurring in sales data.
The table at the end of this document shows the newly tagged dates, their 2016 equivalent tagged dates and Notable Days that are already tagged.
Two dates have not been tagged and it is important that we draw attention to them. They are Saturday 23rd December 2017 and Saturday 30th December 2017. In both cases, the Saturday occurs before significant Notable Days, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve respectively.
The change will be applied w/c 16th October 2017.
Reason for the Change
Analysis of the sales data for multiple organisations during Christmas trading period highlights a significant and relatively abrupt change in sales patterns in the four week lead-up to Christmas and the period between Christmas and New Year. Due to the way Fourth’s algorithm identifies recent trends, the October-November months’ ‘cooling off’ in sales after the summer months causes the system to recognise a downward trend and apply that to its future sales forecasts.
Similarly, the ramp-up towards the end of the year can then affect January forecasting behaviour.
The new change allows the system to use the relevant data from last year to create the December forecasts, while excluding the December period from the January forecasts.
Important Notes
Using the Notable Days function means that weather data is not taken into account when forecasting the tagged days.
23rd December and 30th December have not been tagged because there is no recent, equivalent combination of date and day in historical data for us to analyse or for the system to use in forecasting. The last time that the day before Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve was a Saturday was in 2006.
We have seen year-on-year that when 23rd and 30th December fall on weekdays, such as Thursday or Friday, sales patterns are similar and therefore a last year date can be used with confidence. However, in 2017, the day is a Saturday leaving us without a reasonable data set and possible unpredictable behaviour. We cannot guarantee an accurate forecast on these dates and cannot identify a date that could be used to improve the forecast on those dates this year.
Fourth recommends that all customers communicate with their sites and encourage attention to forecasting over Christmas, particularly these two key dates where local manager knowledge will be invaluable in good sales forecasting.
Post-Christmas, we aim to complete an analysis exercise on Christmas sales trends and look at the two Saturday dates that are currently missing an equivalent. We may look to gather feedback from our customers to help understand what happens in this particular set of circumstances.
What do you need to do?
All customer locations with the UK Standard Notable Days List applied do not need to do anything further, the change is applied automatically.
New Tagged Day List
This document is intended to make clear the changes applied to improve the accuracy of the system-generated forecast over the Christmas 2017 period for organisations using Fourth’s Labour Productivity module.
The Change
A function known as ‘Notable Days’ allows the tagging of particular days where an equivalent last year’s date has been identified as giving a stronger indication of the sales behaviour than when using the ‘normal’ system forecasting method. It is designed to remove anomalies and give calculated weighting to trends occurring in sales data.
The table at the end of this document shows the newly tagged dates, their 2016 equivalent tagged dates and Notable Days that are already tagged.
Two dates have not been tagged and it is important that we draw attention to them. They are Saturday 23rd December 2017 and Saturday 30th December 2017. In both cases, the Saturday occurs before significant Notable Days, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve respectively.
The change will be applied w/c 16th October 2017.
Reason for the Change
Analysis of the sales data for multiple organisations during Christmas trading period highlights a significant and relatively abrupt change in sales patterns in the four week lead-up to Christmas and the period between Christmas and New Year. Due to the way Fourth’s algorithm identifies recent trends, the October-November months’ ‘cooling off’ in sales after the summer months causes the system to recognise a downward trend and apply that to its future sales forecasts.
Similarly, the ramp-up towards the end of the year can then affect January forecasting behaviour.
The new change allows the system to use the relevant data from last year to create the December forecasts, while excluding the December period from the January forecasts.
Important Notes
Using the Notable Days function means that weather data is not taken into account when forecasting the tagged days.
23rd December and 30th December have not been tagged because there is no recent, equivalent combination of date and day in historical data for us to analyse or for the system to use in forecasting. The last time that the day before Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve was a Saturday was in 2006.
We have seen year-on-year that when 23rd and 30th December fall on weekdays, such as Thursday or Friday, sales patterns are similar and therefore a last year date can be used with confidence. However, in 2017, the day is a Saturday leaving us without a reasonable data set and possible unpredictable behaviour. We cannot guarantee an accurate forecast on these dates and cannot identify a date that could be used to improve the forecast on those dates this year.
Fourth recommends that all customers communicate with their sites and encourage attention to forecasting over Christmas, particularly these two key dates where local manager knowledge will be invaluable in good sales forecasting.
Post-Christmas, we aim to complete an analysis exercise on Christmas sales trends and look at the two Saturday dates that are currently missing an equivalent. We may look to gather feedback from our customers to help understand what happens in this particular set of circumstances.
What do you need to do?
All customer locations with the UK Standard Notable Days List applied do not need to do anything further, the change is applied automatically.
New Tagged Day List
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