Rewind to just a few days ago – January 19, 2012. “Housing Starts Rise 4.4%,” reported National Mortgage Professional magazine. Meanwhile, Bloomberg takes a different stance reporting “U.S. Housing Starts Drop 4.1%, Worse Than Forecast.“ When you dig deeper into the articles you’ll find each of sources were actually reporting on the same data but  with the sensationalist headline most appealing to their readers.

Depending on whether your company and team operates with a bullish or bearish outlook, the changes made to your forecast  based on information such as the above might do more damage than good. Just as the authors of these articles did, everyone from supply chain analysts all the way up the the executive team can put very differing spins on the same numbers.  Yet despite the many ways of interpreting the data there can only be one numerical outcome.

If not housing starts, which is the market data that impacts your forecast? From where are you gathering it? How are you integrating these externalities to improve your forecast?

Is it delivering results?

For New Belgium Brewing, Demand Foresight imported unemployment statistics. For Evenflo, it was birth rates. Realizing they weren’t operating in a vacuum and integrating market information these companies made production profitable and  edged the competition by saving in saved themselves costs still being incurred by their competitors.