Business planning can be a challenge at the best of times, but during a period of unprecedented disruption like the current Covid19 crisis, it’s particularly so. Not only is the disruption on a scale none of us have seen in our lifetime, it’s unpredictable in the extreme. Governments are changing rules with massive repercussions almost weekly (most of us would agree with good reason), and the estimates of when we might return to something like normal vary alarmingly.

So, we’ve been working with some of our customers to build forecasts to guide their business planning during the crisis. We’ve used data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics' Data Science Lab to help model the fall in business activity due to the crisis, and a number of estimates as to when lockdown will end to model the return to normal activity.

The huge advantage of automated forecasting is we can re-generate forecasts as often as we like. So, as the situation develops and new information becomes available, we can adjust our models and re-generate the forecasts. It means our customers can respond quickly and effectively to changing circumstances, which is hugely beneficial in such uncertain times.

We’ve seen first-hand how the current crisis is proving a massive challenge for our customers and how automated forecasting can help. So, as far as our own costs allow, we’re offering a few UK business’s free access to our cloud analytics and forecasting platform for a few months to help ride out the crisis.

Our resources are limited, and we will put in some of our own time and effort to help organisation on board, so we need to limit this offer to a few companies we think we can make the most difference with. The software works best for medium or large organisation who have enough data to make forecasting accurate.

If you think this could help your organisation, please just get in touch at https://inmydata.datapa.com/about/contact-us

As an analytics vendor based in Edinburgh we are not new to the world of data science. Indeed, DataPA was amongst the first software developers to enter the field of analytics over 15 years ago. In that time, we have delivered software to more than 30 thousand users in more than 300 companies, both as an embedded technology for our technology partners and as a stand-alone application to our direct customers.

Throughout that time, innovation has always been at the core of what we do. In recent years we have been building on the developments in big data processing and machine learning to ensure we remain at the forefront of the huge disruption we see coming for analytics software. Our goal is to use these technologies to automate the role of the business analyst, reducing the cost and failure rate for analytics implementations. Our first commercial product from this research went live with a customer in January, marking the start of a long road of development and innovation.

So, we are hugely excited about the leading role Scotland is playing in the development of data science. The vibrant academic and business environment attracting talent from across the world, with the support of the Scottish Government and great organisations like DataLab are the perfect environment for companies like ours to flourish. For us, DataSummit18 is an ideal opportunity to showcase what we have been working on and learn from the international talent that the event attracts. If you are going to be at DataSummit18, please stop by out stand. We have lots of real world experience to share and are hungry to learn from others in the data science community.