Financial Forecasting: Tools and Applications - 2018 (Text Based)

Business and financial forecasting is of extreme importance to managers at practically all levels. It is required for top managers to make long-term strategic decisions. Middle management uses sales forecasts to develop their departmental budgets. Every other plan such as a production plan, purchasing plan, manpower plan, and financial plan follows from demand forecasting.  The critical element in any supply chain plan is the demand forecast.

The goal of this course is to provide a working knowledge of the fundamentals of business forecasting that can be applied in the real world regardless of firm size. We walk you through basic forecasting methodology, and then practical applications.  It encompasses a wide range of topics of major importance to practical managers in all functional areas, including cash flow forecasting, cost prediction, earnings forecasts, bankruptcy prediction, foreign exchange forecasting, interest rate forecasting, and technological forecasting. Emphasis is placed on the use of computer technology such as spreadsheets and stand-alone forecasting software.



Learning Objectives:

1. Identify various aspects of forecasting methods.
2. Identify the important steps to budgeting.
3. Recognize the value of sensitivity analysis.
4. Identify factors in the computation of business valuation.
5. Recognize the features of naive forecasting models.
6. Recognize smoothing techniques.
7. Identify the basic components of the time series data.
8. Recognize the steps to perform decomposition of time series.
9. Recognize life cycle stages for new products.
10. Identify assumptions use to forecast sales with the Markov model.