Do you major in Accounting, Marketing, Economics, or Finance? Then, you may consider this course as one of your electives.

This course is concerned with quantitative and qualitative methods to predict the uncertain nature of business trends in an effort to help managers make better decisions and plans. Such methods often involve the study of historical data and manipulation of these data to search for patterns that can be effectively extrapolated to produce forecasts. This course covers all aspects of business forecasting with emphasis on intuitive concepts and applications with the help of professional forecasting software- Forecast Pro XE 5.0. Because forecasting is best taught through practice, the course contains numerous real, relevant, business case studies and examples that students can use to practice the application of concepts.

COURSE OUTLINE / GOALS

• The basics of forecasting: properties of data ♦ overview of methods ♦ evaluating forecast accuracy.
• Exponential smoothing methods: simple one, Holt two and Winters three parameter ♦ Event models
• Time series decomposition: components of data ♦ Seasonal Indices ♦ business cycle
• Box-Jenkins models: advantages and disadvantages ♦ automatic identification ♦ differencing ♦ diagnostics
• Regression models: when to use ♦ standard OLS ♦ lagged variables ♦ Cochrane-Orcutt ♦ Hypothesis tests
• Special forecasting topics / industry forecasting practices: short-lived products forecasting ♦ judgmental forecasting.

By the end of the course you will know how to: Navigate effectively and efficiently through Forecast Pro; set up your input data easily and quickly; save results via custom reports, graphs, spreadsheets and audit trails; Select appropriate forecasting techniques; Build automatic and custom forecast models; Model promotions, outliers and irregular seasonality using Event models; Build multiple level models to forecast product hierarchies; And much more. In short, by the end of the course you will not only have gained considerable insight into business forecasting, but will also be at the level of solving your own forecasting problems.

You can contact Dr Zerom at dzerom@fullerton.edu for more information about the course.