Getting started with the forecast module

Welcome to your new Forecasting experience, fully integrated into the platform to help you plan better, anticipate more, and simplify your operations.

Whether you're preparing for a peak sales period, launching a campaign, or simply aiming to restock on time, our new Forecast Module gives you the tools to submit more accurate forecasts and access key data in one place.

🔍 What is the Forecast Module?

The Forecast Module is a newly integrated tool within your merchant dashboard that replaces external forms (Tally, Hubspot, Google Sheets) and centralizes your forecasting process.

It allows you to:

• Submit weekly and daily order volume forecasts per warehouse and sales channel (B2C & B2B)
• Access historical data and our baseline forecast to guide your input
• Get notifications to remind you when it's time to submit
• View forecast accuracy and trends over time

This helps you provide better data and gives our operations team more visibility to plan warehouse and transport capacity.

🧭  Why forecasting matters?

Forecasting is key to:

• Ensuring warehouse resources are available when you need them
• Avoiding out-of-stock or overstock situations
• Managing your peaks (Black Friday, campaigns, restocks, etc.)
• Improving shipping performance during high-volume periods

🧑‍💻 How to access it?

1. From your Bigblue app, go to Orders → Forecasts
2. Click Share forecasts
3. Select the warehouse and channel you are forecasting for.
   1. Note: If someone else from your team owns a channel or a country of preparation they will be able to share their forecasts on top of yours.
4. Share next period forecast. Optional:
   1. Use Bigblue’s model to assess your figures if you have doubts.
   2. Fill future weeks on top of the next period if you already have visibility.
5. Optional: Record events on coming weeks, with a name and a description to help Bigblue understand your operations and staff warehouses accordingly.
6. Review daily distribution. By default Bigblue’s distribution key is used. It leverages past year volumes, monthly and weekly seasonality as well as your growth trend.
   1. Note: If you edit daily volumes and the total exceeds the weekly volume you announced, the daily total will replace your initial weekly value.
7. Repeat for each channel and warehouse
8. Review your forecast summary and confirm it before submitting it.

📊  Leveraging the forecast home page

The forecast home page is here to give you access to past data and help you understanding better your forecasts performance. It allows you to filter on channels, warehouses and timeframes.

🔍  Understanding past forecast accuracy

Past forecast accuracy is calculated as the ratio between your submitted orders and the forecasted value. It shows you how good your estimate were. An accuracy below 90% makes same day preparation harder.

📈 Forecast evolution

Forecast evolution shows you on one hand the actual number of orders submitted, the value you forecasted and the resulting accuracy and on the other hand the future weekly volumes you planned.

The same information can be accessed on a table view at the bottom of the page.