Analyze forecasting data to improve business decisions
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
Software can pull the data, run the comparison and write up what it found. The accuracy depends almost entirely on whether it is wired into the real system of record rather than a stale copy, which is the problem the tools and auth layer exists to solve.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Analysis and evaluation work |
| Jobs that do it | 10 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Builders, Tools and auth |
| O*NET activity | Analyzing Data or Information (4.A.2.a.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 10 occupations that perform it.
- Analyze marketing or sales trends to forecast future conditions.
- Use sales forecasting or strategic planning to ensure the sale and profitability of products, lines, or services, analyzing business developments and monitoring market trends.
- Develop or analyze information to assess the current or future financial status of firms.
- Perform or evaluate research, such as detailed company or industry analyses, to inform financial forecasting, decision making, or valuation.
- Review invoices, work orders, consumption reports, or demand forecasts to estimate peak performance periods and to issue work assignments.
- Evaluate construction methods and determine cost-effectiveness of plans, using computer models.
- Collect and analyze survey data, regulatory information, and demographic and employment trends to forecast enrollment patterns and the need for curriculum changes.
- Collect and analyze survey data, regulatory information, and data on demographic and employment trends to forecast enrollment patterns and curriculum change needs.
- Analyze information on property values, taxes, zoning, population growth, and traffic volume and patterns to determine if properties should be acquired.
- Analyze retail data to identify current or emerging trends in theft or fraud.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for analysis and evaluation work, and what it costs.
Start in the assistant with an export of the real data, because the accuracy problem here is a stale copy rather than a weak model. Make, at $9 a month, is the cheapest way to put the pull on a schedule once the analysis is worth repeating.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
10 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Advertising and Promotions Managers
- Construction Managers
- Education Administrators, Kindergarten through Secondary
- Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare
- Financial Managers
- Investment Fund Managers
- Loss Prevention Managers
- Marketing Managers
- Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
- Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Analyze data to improve operations”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.