Demand Forecasting
Quickly achieve a minimum 10% improvement in Forecast Accuracy
Businesses around university campuses thrive from students’ buying patterns. Whether it’s a surge in coffee consumption because of upcoming exams or beer consumption during football season, many businesses rely on college students to drive revenue. The new restrictions on in-person university attendance has caused major disruption to local college economies and businesses might be struggling on how they can identify revenue streams and cost savings to keep themselves afloat.
It’s now more important than ever for businesses to track university schedules and understand how academic events can still impact demand. Here’s are a few examples of opportunities your business could leverage:
Class sessions like the timing of semesters, quarters, and summer sessions will determine when students who are returning to in-person classes will be in the area. Retailers and restaurants need to have a reliable way to track class session updates and staff their workforce and inventory accordingly.
Exam schedules and mid terms have likely increased coffee consumption in the past but with less students around the campus, you might not need as much staff on hand. Having access to historical demand impact can help you align your inventory and rostering based expected demand shifts this year. Creating efficient operations drives down costs for your business.
University holidays and observances might mean students might leave college towns to seek out a quick weekend on the beach or in the mountains. Alternatively for universities in destination locations like San Diego or Los Angeles, businesses might see an increase in demand during these times.
Graduation events like commencement may bring in families and friends which drive up hotel bookings and restaurant reservations. Businesses might also see an increase in food delivery if restaurants in the college area are enforcing capacity restrictions. Ensure pricing and availability matches anticipated demand during these times to capitalize on this opportunity.
Tracking all of these manually or attempting to create an academic calendar in this ambiguous environment is a daunting task and the process can take store managers hours to attempt. PredictHQ has aggregated academic events for universities around the country so you have visibility into demand opportunities.
Our API acts as the single source of truth for university schedules. You can access millions of verified academic events and have visibility to upcoming demand opportunities. In addition to event tracking, improve demand forecasting by training your models with historical academic events data. We’ve built features within our data so your forecasting models can identify the academic events with the highest business impact and better predict total impact on upcoming events.
By tracking university schedules and school restrictions in the area, you’ll be able to better understand anticipated demand and improve inventory levels, staffing schedules, marketing promotions, and much more .
Quickly achieve a minimum 10% improvement in Forecast Accuracy
Use event data to enable your AI models with contextual real-world data
Get value from demand intelligence by being able to upload locations, search and identify relevant events efficiently
Identify demand catalysts to improve supply chain efforts and inventory levels
Unlock better targeting and timing for your ad campaigns with privacy-safe event data
Know impactful events in advance and adjust prices sooner
Reduce labor costs and improve profitability by scheduling around events
Visualize event data through BI tools like Tableau to better understand impact
Ensure your network of delivery drivers is prepared based on demand from events
With university re-openings proving to be dynamic, it’s essential for data teams to stay updated as academic events change. Data teams can use historical academic data to understand how university schedules impact demand patterns and improve their forecasting accuracy, but it’s crucial for all teams to have visibility when schedules change and restriction updates are released.
Real time event notifications allows businesses to be the first to know when university events are updated or restrictions are changed. With PredictHQ Notifications, receive custom event alerts right when changes happen so you can quickly make decisions around inventory controls, staffing schedules, and more.
Class sessions might impact business demand differently than university holidays, so it’s essential for you to prioritize your efforts on the types of events that matter. Don’t waste your time tracking university events with minimal demand impact and start using PredictHQ’s event ranking technology to identify critical events to follow. Our machine learning models calculate the expected undergraduate full time student attendance, factoring in each institution’s COVID policy.
Our ranking models start by predicting an event’s impact by drawing on years of historical data and event entities like university population, geography, attendance history and much more. Each event is assigned 3 different ranks based on attendance, local impact, and impact on air travel so you have a clear understanding of how you should prioritize. Event rankings are a critical component to our data enrichment process that allows customers to hone in on the academic events with high impact.
Knowing the impact of demand causal factors like events will transform your business. The American Society of Hematology has a $45M estimated economic impact — and that's only one event in one city.
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