Maximizing your investment in the SAS^® System...
...and those in your organization who use it.

CONSULTING BY SIERRA INFORMATION SERVICES

Forecasting

Sierra's expertise in applying time series modeling tools to data results in useful and actionable forecasts of future values of your historical data. Our work goes beyond mere application of a model; instead, we incorporate knowledge of business processes, finance and other important factors so that our results can be effectively applied within your organization. Among our recent forecasting projects are:

• Development of a "trends forecasting" application for the actuarial department of a large managed care provider. Application, written in the SAS programming language, provided diagnostic assessments of health care utilization and cost trends across multiple series of historical data and created statistical forecasts of future values of these series. Output from the application included customized reports, graphs and statistical tables.
• Enhanced the spare parts revenue forecasting system for a large automobile manufacturer. These revisions improved the automated statistical methodologies applied to the historical data series, enhanced the visual quality of reports generated from the forecasts, and reduced the extent of manual intervention previously required in the monthly forecasting process.
• Forecasts of outpatient visits to both primary care and specialist providers in a large health maintenance organization. Forecasts were used to develop both physician and support staff scheduling and to assess need for additional and/or relocated medical office space. Analytic techniques applied included exponential smoothing models, Box-Jenkins (i.e., ARIMA) techniques, intervention and transfer function models.