Ecommerce demand forecasting is the process of predicting future sales by combining historical metrics, namely previous sales, the number of customers, and repeat purchases. Accurate benchmarks guide every company's marketing strategy and inventory levels with cash flow being the ultimate goal.

Online retail has seen a spike in the recent past and continues to grow rapidly, especially following the Covid-19 pandemic situation, which has opened up new opportunities for companies to optimise their operations. Hence, it becomes very important to forecast demand accurately and incorporate this into ordering and procurement processes, thereby building a holistic demand planning framework.

Due to this, it becomes very important to forecast demand accurately which can be incorporated with the ordering and procurement processes, thus, building a holistic demand planning framework.

At Metyis, we start by laying out our business partner's current approach to demand planning by identifying the key processes, decisions, and assumptions upon which the business operates. This analysis facilitates better communication about pain points and enables critical brainstorming with the business. By aligning with our business partners, we strive to realise solutions together.

Whilst these solutions can take many forms, the underlying goals are often similar, like playing into customer demand, improving inventory management, maximising margins, and optimising budgets and supply chains. A key component in realising these goals is accurately forecasting demand and enabling robust demand planning, which is why we combine data science expertise with the domain knowledge of our partners, to create a transparent and flexible demand forecasting approach.

We believe it is important to use some of the latest modelling techniques that can consider a multitude of factors that influence the demand such as business-specific seasonality, different product hierarchies, and relevant brand or business data.