More than one million forecasts for environmental, energy and contamination control products are continually displayed and revised in an Internet-based system maintained by the McIlvaine Company. Previously, market forecasts were revised yearly. Now, with the power of the Internet, changes are instantly reflected.
This ability for continuous revision is particularly important in dynamic industries such as semiconductors. Forecasts of filtration products for the semiconductor industry have been increased by more than 40 percent in the last twelve months due to the unanticipated surge of semiconductor sales. Sudden forecast changes are occurring in the power industry as well. The major increases in natural gas prices have caused reductions in the forecast for gas turbine sales and increases in the forecasts for all the environmental products associated with coal-fired generators.
According to Bob McIlvaine, president of the McIlvaine Company, "The power of the Internet to display large quantities of continually revised forecasts will lead to a new concept for sales and promotion budgeting. Instead of rigid yearly budgets, there will be action triggers that will redirect expenses when predetermined deviations from the original forecast are reached. Production can be better matched with demand. This will result in bigger profits in boom times and lower losses in down times.
Presently forecasts for a number of environmental, energy and contamination control products are displayed. These are forecasts for the next five years segmented by state and aggregated into nine regions within the United States. Forecasts also are provided for each country and aggregated by sub-continent and continent. Within each state and country there is segmentation for each major end user industry. Market share data for thousands of suppliers of these products also is displayed. All the displays are the result of real-time queries and calculations and are not just static displays. So, changes made to one country or industry instantly are reflected in all the displays which include this segment. It is this feature of the Internet, according to McIlvaine, which makes it feasible to economically provide voluminous and current forecasts.
SOURCE: McIlvaine Company
