Business Forecasting

By Prof. Pankaj Dutta | IIT Bombay

Learners enrolled: 1809 | Exam registration: 88

ABOUT THE COURSE:

Business forecasting is the technique used to cast the foremost business scenarios to ease out the business decisions and management in future. The ongoing development in the field of predictive analytics using data analytics and machine learning techniques helps to shape and analyze the historical data to know the future business possibilities. Utilizing the power of business forecasting allows organizations to handle the uncertainty better and find new possibilities for sustainable growth of business. This course 'business forecasting' will help learners to gain the proficiency in predictive analytics applications and develop the skills to analyze historical data for future demand planning and resource allocation. It will help to understand the key role of forecasting in business planning; understand and know when to use various models of forecasting; the analysis of time series data into various components such as seasonality, trend, and cyclical forecast; understand both qualitative and quantitative forecasting approaches and several business applications of forecasting in marketing, inventory and supply chains, project management, finance and retailing.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Students (UG/PG/PhD), faculty, and industry professionals

PREREQUISITES: Basic Probability and Statistics;The students should be at least in their final year of UG and above

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: All sectors/companies/industries

Summary

Course Status :	Upcoming
Course Type :	Elective
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	8 weeks
Category :	Management Studies
Credit Points :	2
Level :	Undergraduate/Postgraduate
Start Date :	17 Feb 2025
End Date :	11 Apr 2025
Enrollment Ends :	17 Feb 2025
Exam Registration Ends :	24 Feb 2025
Exam Date :	26 Apr 2025 IST

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1:

Lecture 1: Introduction to Business forecasting

Lecture 2: Data Driven Decision Making and Essentials of Predictive Analytics

Lecture 3: Types of Forecasting: Qualitative Approaches and Quantitative Approaches

Week 2:

Lecture 4: Components of a Time Series and Measures of Forecast Accuracy

Lecture 5: Moving Average Methods: Simple, Weighted, and Exponential Moving Average

Week 3:

Lecture 6: Exponential Smoothing

Lecture 7: Trend Projections and Holt Model

Week 4:

Lecture 8: Regression Analysis

Lecture 9: Measure of Goodness and Standard Error

Week 5:

Lecture 10: Seasonality, Seasonal Index, and Quarterly Average Method

Lecture 11: Seasonality and Trend: Holt Winter Method

Lecture 12: Decomposition Method

Week 6:

Lecture 13: ACF and PACF

Lecture 14: ARIMA

Week 7:

Lecture 15: Introduction to Machine Learning

Lecture 16: Logistic Regression

Lecture 17: Human Judgement in Time Series Analysis

Week 8:

Lecture 18: Monte Carlo Simulation and Risk Analytics

Lecture 19: Predictive Analytics using @Risk software/Python

Books and references

Text Book:

Business Forecasting: John E Hanke and Dean Wichern, Pearson, 9th Edition

Reference Book:

1. Business Analytics, (PART 4: Regressions Analysis and Time Series Forecasting), Albright and Winston, Cengage Learning, 5th Edition, 2015

2. Essentials of Business Analytics- Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics, (Chapter 1,4,5,6 and 11), Jeffrey D. Camm, James J. Cochran, Michael J. Fry, Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, David R. Anderson, Cengage Learning, 2nd Edition, 2016

3. Forecasting Methods and Applications, Makridakis et al., 3rd Edition, 2017, Willey.

4. An introduction to Management Science, Chapter 15, Anderson and Williams, Cengage Learning, 13th Edition, 2015

5. Quantitative Analysis for Management, Render and Stair, Chapter 5, Pearson, 10th Edition.

Instructor bio

Prof. Pankaj Dutta

IIT Bombay

Prof. Pankaj Dutta Pankaj Dutta is Professor in Decision Sciences and Operations Research at Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai, India. He holds a PhD degree from IIT Kharagpur, India, and a Postdoctoral Fellow from EPFL, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland. He has worked as INSA Fellow at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany, and DAAD Visiting Professor at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He served as an associate editor of OPSEARCH and Guest Editor, editorial board member and reviewer of several international journals. He is the central council member of the Operational Research Society of India (ORSI). He has received the departmental Excellence in Teaching Award, several merit/best paper awards & research grants and is also a member of ORSI, ISDSI and PMI, India. Many of his research scholars have received the Best PhD Thesis Award. His current areas of research interest include data analytics, supply chain management, business forecasting, e-commerce analytics, circular economy, multi criteria decision making, and business simulation. He is also interested in portfolio optimization and decision-making under risk and uncertainty. He has several publications in international journals like European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Annals of Operations Research, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Review, International Journal of Information Management,Information Systems Frontiers, Journal of Cleaner Production, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, International Journal of Production Research, Information Systems & E-Business Management, Computers & Industrial Engineering among others

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams: April 26, 2025 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 6 assignments out of the total 8 assignments given in the course.

Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Bombay .It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team