Overview
Scaled AI-powered forecasting across thousands of products and hundreds of stores.
Across multiple engagements, Fusemachines helped a global retailer modernize demand, sales, and distribution forecasting across markets and channels. The work supported inventory allocation, financial planning, pricing analysis, and fulfillment planning.
Automated machine learning pipelines replaced manual workflows and traditional forecasting methods, connecting forecasts directly to the retailer’s existing data platforms and business dashboards.
The challenge
Forecasting at Scale: Producing detailed forecasts across thousands of products and hundreds of stores placed significant demands on existing systems and made traditional approaches difficult to maintain.
Fragmented Data: Sales transactions, product information, traffic, and promotional data were spread across databases and spreadsheets, requiring extensive preparation before they could support reliable forecasts.
Demand Volatility: Seasonal peaks, promotions, and shifts in purchasing behavior made it difficult to anticipate demand and allocate inventory across channels.
Limited Product History: New products lacked the historical sales data needed to establish dependable demand forecasts and distribution plans.
Fuse solution
Automated Data Pipelines: Built modular pipelines to consolidate, clean, and prepare data from multiple sources, incorporating sales history, pricing, seasonality, and promotional activity.
Demand Driver Analysis: Analyzed transaction records and product catalogs to identify relevant patterns and develop model inputs that reflected the commercial drivers of demand.
Advanced Forecasting Models: Evaluated machine learning and deep learning approaches against existing methods, selecting models based on forecast error, bias, and the balance between overestimating and underestimating demand.
Forecast Validation and Scenario Analysis: Developed interactive dashboards that enabled teams to compare forecasts with actual performance, explore demand drivers, and test how changes in planning assumptions could affect projections.
The impact
Improved forecast quality and automated planning workflows across sales, inventory, finance, and distribution.
Lower Forecast Error:
Achieved up to 50% lower forecast error compared with traditional statistical baselines in evaluated use cases.
Stronger Seasonal Planning:
Nearly halved peak-season forecast error, helping teams better anticipate demand during critical sales periods.
Reduced Stockout Risk:
Improved allocation forecasts reduced the estimated probability of store stockouts by approximately 25%.
Automated Business Workflows:
Replaced manual spreadsheet tracking with recurring forecasting pipelines that fed business intelligence dashboards and pricing tools, supporting daily forecasts and monthly and quarterly planning.
