Forecasting 1: Introduction to Security Forecasting

Loss Prevention and Security Management need to have an idea of what the future holds in order to appropriately staff, budget and plan. However, changing employee markets, theft motivation, personnel attitudes, management attitudes, business practices and technology ensure they may never be certain how to reach their goals.

Analysts may extrapolate the future business trends based on historical records, however, and this process is called forecasting. If loss patterns are stored in a database (even paper or spreadsheeted records may be used) then the analyst can use these records to forecast future losses. Many sophisticated forecasting applications are available, and costs of these applications can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Fortunately, Microsoft Excel contains many sophisticated forecasting tools, and their use is fairly simple. To illustrate the use of Excel to do basic forecasting (and even some more advanced techniques in future posts). We will develop a hypothetical case study using the fictitious National Express Company (NexCo).