In Back to the Future II, Biff Tannen grabs a sports almanac from 2015 (yes, 2015!) and returns to 1955 armed with scores that make the 1955 Biff very rich. As of Tuesday, DigMyData users can see see the future as well – though we can’t promise you the riches Biff saw, we’re pretty sure forecasting will help you run your business.

Forecasting

What we are doing right is pretty basic modeling that takes about 90 days worth of your data and projects it out in linear fashion with a bit of weighting to make more recent data move the line up or down a bit more. We recognize this is a simplistic method – but we feel that it is a great start.

In the future, we’ll look at a more robust model looking at annual, monthly, weekly patterns (we’d really like to look at day of the week and last day of the month assumptions and any correlations with holidays or other specific events). This will be an ongoing process and over time we will make this an even more helpful tool.

Why

We put forecasting into the product because you can’t change anything about the past. Doc Brown’s DeLorean can’t take us into the past and fix something – all we can do is learn from it. The future, on the other hand, is full of opportunity. What we do today CAN change what happens tomorrow.

This changes DigMyData completely – rather than only looking backwards, forecasting out what your business will look like in September – or the end of the year or even in 2015 – helps you think about where you want to be. The forecasts will challenge your assumptions about where you think you will be on those dates.

Some examples:

Sales -

You’ve been telling your spouse that you will quit your job as soon as the company is bringing in $3,000 a month. Now you know when to put in your two weeks notice.

You want to hire a full-times salesperson once you reach $10,000 in monthly sales. Forecasting, even our simple method, will give you a good idea when you need to start asking for referrals.

Support -

You know from your calculation lines that you get X emails for every sale you make. You’re happy to talk to your customers, but at some point you’ll need to hire someone, even part-time, to help interact with your customers. Don’t be surprised – just look into the future.

How to use Forecasting

We do our very best to not make new settings for every new feature we release. We work hard so that the defaults will just work for most of you. In this case, we have turned on forecasting for all customers for all lines. Just drag the chart to the left or press the arrow key –> to move the chart into the future. You’ll notice that the current period (shown below) has a solid line on the left and a dashed line on the right.

We show the current period point in the forecast position which gave us a distinct advantage over our previous UI (and just about anyone out there): No more cliff (line) dives!

Previously, when you reached today, this week, or this month, the line would dive to zero since the data was incomplete. No longer!

Go to it!