When a lot of forecasting today is based on historical data without understanding ‘why’, PredictHQ is focused on helping people to understand that ‘why’. It is enabling companies to proactively identify catalysts of demand to drastically improve the accuracy of the forecast models. Through an interaction with Campbell Brown, CEO & Co-Founder, PredictHQ, we try to learn how demand intelligence can help companies to make better decisions and achieve better outcomes, even during the pandemic.
Q. How, do you think, the pandemic has affected the society and the economy?
A. When we try to understand a catalyst, it’s not just the event itself, it’s how it changes things in depth. The pandemic has brought in unprecedented changes in almost every sphere of our lives. In coming times, we are going to see a lot of hybrid solutions, for instance businesses will have to adopt a work from home plus an office solution for work. There is going to be a much higher reliance on hyperlocal activity. The suppressed demands will bubble to the surface.
Q. How geospatial or data science has helped in addressing the impact of COVID19?
A. Today, there is a lot more emphasis on the ability to understand people’s movements. In future, a lot more businesses will focus on the prediction of people’s movements because we have to understand how this relates to supply chain optimization. What we are also going to see is a much larger drive in using machine learning to understand catchment areas better. Location is helping a lot to solve outbreaks. It is really important to ensure that the location data is as accurate as possible.
Q. How do you think the dynamics of retail will change in the post COVID world?
A. In the post COVID world, some people will go back to normal, other people will form new habits. Some people will still want to have the ability to choose and to look in, to feel and understand about purchasing. Probably there might be a larger shift to the convenience of having it delivered but again how will the businesses meet the rising demand of drivers to maintain that level of convenience across the world is a thing that needs to be considered. Brand loyalties will also change. Many people have started preferring local ‘mom and pop’ shops more than the big brands. That’s a potential shift in people’s behavior.
Q. What has COVID taught us about data?
A. In terms of understanding and forecasting demand, the key thing is that businesses have been able to adapt to forecasting in a machine learning led way. But we need additional inputs to go into this forecast model. We should not throw away any kind of data. Using the data gathered during the pandemic, businesses can be better prepared to handle future crises.
Also Read: The future of the commercial satellite imagery business model
Q. In this respect, is even bad data good data?
A. Absolutely. It’s a real shame that people consider throwing away the data related to decremental demand in 2020, because you have this kind of event occurring once in a couple of decades, but again we are moving into an environment where this could occur again, whether at a global level or even at a local level. But if you can understand what’s the impact on supply chain to the way in which people buy and apply that knowledge the next time this occurs, this is worth so much money. And what we are advocating massively to all our customers is to use this time to better understand how this has impacted your business, so you can plan accordingly. Some things will go back to normal in a certain way, but others won’t. If your models can adjust, learn and adapt that will be super useful for your business.
Q. When do you think we would be able to get back to December 2019 levels?
A. This will differ from business to business. For instance, for businesses like Zoom, in times of lockdown and the work from home phenomenon, they have seen explosive growth. In the post COVID world, when people will start going out of home, their business may reduce but ultimately the amount they have added will add a significant amount of growth to their business.
If you look at retail or grocery, they have done a couple of things, we now have more delivery options which is good. This is actually forcing a real hard look at supply chain – what are the things that we can undo, what we can do to improve supply chain. When you look at decremental demand and suppressed demand, for someone like ‘Instacart’, they will potentially even see decrease in demand. So, its balancing all these factors.
A key thing for many big companies to consider is how do we adapt? How do we shift focus? We have got these really nimble startups taking advantage of the situation, how do we do it? Larger firms would think why we aren’t earning more in some of the aspects where we saw a large amount of growth. So, they will make efforts to understand the customer and service them better in the future.
There is a lot of learning from the pandemic, and I hope that we really look deep into the data and prepare ourselves for the future accordingly.
