Mixture degree forecasts
The first forecast of this sub-team is the aggregate-level gross sales forecast. With this undertaking, we forecast the gross sales for the upcoming X weeks, each on the weekly and each day ranges. To present a little bit of context round aggregation, one attainable degree of aggregation may very well be the gross sales of the corporate as a complete. Such a forecast may help with making company-level choices and dealing on setting targets and expectations. One other attainable degree could be gross sales that come by way of the warehouses of bol, which is essential for operations and workforce allocation.
An essential widespread attribute of most aggregate-level forecasts in our group is that in addition they rely upon the gross sales forecast (making them downstream forecasts), as gross sales are sometimes the first driver of many different metrics that we’re forecasting.
This leads us to a different essential forecast, which is the buyer help interplay forecast. With this undertaking, we offer an estimate of what number of interactions our buyer help brokers can anticipate inside the subsequent weeks. This forecast is essential for the enterprise, as we don’t need to over-forecast, which might result in overstaffing of buyer help. Alternatively, we additionally don’t need to under-forecast, as that might result in prolonged ready occasions for our clients.
To guarantee that our companies (webshop, app) scale properly throughout the peak interval (November and December), we additionally present a request forecast, that’s, what number of requests the companies can anticipate throughout the busy intervals.
Lastly, we offer a variety of logistics-related forecasts. Bol has a number of warehouses wherein we retailer each our personal objects, and the objects of our companions who want to use bol’s logistical capabilities to make their enterprise function easily. As such, we offer just a few completely different forecasts associated to logistics.
The primary one is logistics outbound forecasts, that’s, a forecast indicating what number of objects will depart our warehouses within the coming weeks. Equally, we offer an inbound forecast, which focuses on objects arriving in our warehouses. Moreover, we additionally present a extra specialised inbound forecast that additional divides the incoming objects by the kind of package deal they arrive in (for instance, a pallet vs a field). That’s essential as these completely different sorts of packages are processed by completely different stations inside the warehouses and we’d like to ensure they’re staffed appropriately.
Merchandise degree forecasts
The second sub-team focuses on item-level forecasts. Bol affords round 36 million distinctive objects on the platform, and for many of these, we do want to offer demand forecasts. These predictions are used for stocking functions. This fashion, we attempt to anticipate the wants of our clients and order any objects they could require properly prematurely in order that we will ship it to them as quickly as attainable.
Moreover, the group supplies a devoted forecast that may deal with newly launched objects and pre-orders. With this forecast, the stakeholders can anticipate what number of objects will promote sooner or later earlier than the discharge and inside the subsequent month after the discharge. This fashion, we will guarantee that we’ve sufficient copies of FIFA or Stephen King’s newest novel.
Lastly, our group additionally developed a promotional uplift forecast, which helps to guage the uplift in gross sales of a given merchandise based mostly on the value low cost and the period of the promotion. This forecast is utilized by our specialists to make higher, data-driven choices relating to designing promotions.