AI-driven forecasting accuracy: How Fractal and AWS transformed a global food packaging company
Summary
Forecasting is essential for maintaining a competitive edge in the evolving landscape of e-commerce and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Accurate forecasting can significantly influence a company’s ability to make informed decisions, manage inventory, and meet customer demands.
A leading global food processing and packaging solutions company faced significant challenges in enhancing its forecasting accuracy across various categories in the e-commerce market over five years. These challenges stemmed from integrating diverse data sources, maintaining data quality, and adapting to evolving market conditions.
Fractal was engaged to develop a sophisticated forecasting solution using its AI-based platform, Foresient. This solution leverages AWS infrastructure to provide high-accuracy forecasts at scale. The enhanced accuracy empowered the company to make better business decisions, optimize inventory management, and drive sustainable growth.
Business challenge
- Insights across multiple categories: The company needed a solution to deliver comprehensive insights across various product categories in e-commerce. This approach was essential for understanding different market dynamics and customer behaviors.
- Forecasting accuracy: Achieving high category forecasting accuracy was crucial for accurately anticipating market demands. Inaccurate forecasts could lead to overproduction or stockouts, both of which negatively impact the company’s operations and customer satisfaction.
- Evolving conditions: The dynamic nature of e-commerce requires the company to continually adapt and refine its forecasting models to keep up with changing trends and consumer behaviors. This necessitated a flexible and robust forecasting solution that could evolve with the market.
Approach / Solution
To address the client’s complex challenges, we adopted a transformative approach that began with comprehensive discovery sessions to understand their requirements deeply. This foundational knowledge allowed us to identify specific business needs and challenges.
We performed extensive data pre-processing, including sanity checks and data harmonization, to ensure the reliability of inputs and move beyond simple or manual forecasting methods.
Leveraging Fractal’s Foresient platform on AWS, the client achieved high-accuracy forecasting at speed and scale by integrating historical reporting and other associated data. Foresient is built on Amazon EC2, Amazon EMR, Amazon RDS, and Amazon S3.
This holistic solution enabled clients to navigate their markets more effectively, enhancing their decision-making and operational efficiency.
Results
Implementing the Foresient solution had an immediate and significant impact on the client’s operations. It successfully generated precise forecasts across multiple categories, achieving an accuracy range of 80% to 95%.
With this high level of accuracy, the client could better manage inventory, production planning, and strategic decision-making. This ultimately led to enhanced operational efficiency and market responsiveness.