Making Excel Forecasting Simple
A practitioner faces the challenge of forecasting with only Excel, needing to balance process simplification with maintaining accuracy in revenue, profit, and resource planning driven by direct labor. The article analyzes whether the proposed simplified method based on fulfillment cycles, percentage of completion, target profit margins, and historical data is feasible.
I have Excel as my only source for forecasting and have been tasked with making it less detailed and simpler to use and follow. The challenge is that our industry is very direct labor driven and without planning out billable hours per customer, it becomes difficult to plan revenue, margins, and resources needed. I do not have the option to move away from Excel so I was exploring using a very simple method of planning revenue and margins based on period of performance, percentage of completion, targeted margins and then using historical revenue data and historical timesheets to attempt planning resources on new forecasted revenue. Would that be too broad and irresponsible?