Choosing the right level to forecast can be difficult. If you go to the very bottom and forecast Item/Customer you can end up managing too many variables and spend all you time managing to one of promotions. Going to lowest level can constrain buy in from other departments. Sales is most interested in forecasted dollars. Asking them to input a promotion across thousands of customers is not feasible.
When your forecast is capture at a very high level you miss out on details and have to guesstimate on details. One example is dollars. If I know the cases but have different pricing between customers I’ll have to guess at what the revenue should be.
The solution is to use Web-Integrated forecasting tool where we combine customers and detail items they buy. This option allows us to make quick fast changes while still capturing the details of promotions and spikes in demand. The customer grouping allow for exact calculation of dollars/revenue and in most cases can help organizations change forecast in both cases and dollars.