Demand Forecasting: Time to Replace Your Crystal Ball with Something Smarter

It’s ironic. The ability to accurately forecast labor demand can make a multi-million-dollar difference to labor costs and impact management productivity, job satisfaction, retention rates, and more – yet most retailers still depend on primitive, ineffective tools for demand forecasting.

A recently released study by Forrester Research, The Total Economic Impact™ of the Legion Workforce Management Platform, found that before implementing the Legion WFM platform, participating organizations either had no forecasting solution at all or turned to manual systems that didn’t deliver accurate forecasts.

Discrepancies between projected and actual workforce demand led to gaps in coverage, higher overtime pay, and lost time for managers who had to constantly pore over paper spreadsheets to predict labor requirements.

Demand Forecasting that’s Data-Driven, AI-Powered, and Fully Automated

What’s a smarter solution? Today’s data integration, AI, machine learning, and automation technologies can be combined to radically improve the speed and accuracy of demand forecasting. More specifically, a modern solution can deliver the following capabilities:

• Integration of data points: By bringing together granular data from thousands of demand impact points, including external data from events, weather, local laws, and more, organizations in the Forrester study increased forecasting accuracy to 95% over three years.
• Use of AI and machine learning to improve accuracy: With an AI-based solution, managers can generate an accurate, effective labor plan. Budget planners can leverage machine-learning-powered forecasts to optimize labor budgets over specified time periods – up to 12-18 months in advance – and automatically adjust for time-based patterns, seasonality, and holidays.
• Based on mature data science: With more than 4 years in production environments, businesses get the advantage of self-learning models that adapt to business changes and continuously deliver highly accurate, granular demand forecasts.
• Automation of scheduling tasks: By reducing the manual effort needed to predict schedule and shift management needs, the automation enables managers to reassign time spent on tedious tasks to strategic, value-added activities.

Get the Details. Read the Study.

Harnessing the demand forecasting features of Legion WFM resulted in significant, quantified benefits for Legion customers, according to the Forrester study¹:

• $6.1 million in savings (46% of total savings) over three years due to more accurate demand forecasts
• $4.2 million in labor cost savings over three years from increased manager productivity due to automation of key tasks with AI
• 10% reduction in overtime pay due to automated handling of compliance violations in schedule creation and execution

Read the full Forrester study and get the details about demand forecasting and other key capabilities of the Legion WFM platform. We’d love to show you how your business can benefit from using Legion WFM. Please get in touch.

¹ Based on customer interviews and composite organization of 10,000 employees moving from a legacy WFM system over three years.