Excel 2007 : Forecasting

[donald.bryant]

Hey Guys, first post here.

I am a resource planner for a call center, and am trying to put together a forecasting model. Basically it is broken down into 30 minute intervals throughout the day, shows the number of contacts that we were forecasted to have that interval, and then a third column for the actual contacts that we received. There is another table for scheduling but I'm not worried about it right now.

I've recently found that excel does feature a forecasting formula but I'm not so sure how accurate it is or if I am using it correctly. If you'll kindly look to the attachment, you can see by the graph, the sharp negative spike that shows forecasting from 1:00 PM to 1:30. I do not expect that to be the case however as our contacts are trending to be in the 400's for that particular time frame.

Throughout the day I do update the actual column with the exact number of contacts and I am hoping that through use off the forecast formula to get an estimate of what the future intervals will look like. Can someone please help me to get a more accurate forecast?

[Pete_UK]

Hi Donald,

your first FORECAST formula is in cell C14, with fixed values above - I think you need to change the formula to this:

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and then you can copy it down.

Hope this helps.

Pete