Dataset description

The dataset used contains the sales statistics of GBI Bike Company, Inc. that distributes
bicycles and accessories in the United States and Germany.
It has entries from January 2007 to December, 2011. In the colder months, from
October to March, sales revenue slows. It rises in April, peaks in June and declines
sharply in July.
As depicted in the graph, there is evidence of seasonality in sales revenue. The
revenues are denoted by the nodes in the line graph.

Sales declines and spikes are an almost inevitable part of the business. Many
businesses are missing opportunities to either mitigate or leverage their effects if they
ignore when and why they happen.
The key to understanding the business sales patterns is to use their previous
sales data to predict when these fluctuations will occur, and then strategize accordingly.
Implementation

A triple exponential smoothing algorithm is configured to forecast the sales. The

smoothing constants used are Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Their values for this prediction
are 0.3, 0.1 and 0.1 respectively. When the analysis is run and the forecast is generated
and graphed, we notice that the forecast values seem to be reasonably in line with the
historical data.

Visualizing the forecast data

When the forecast data is graphed, the chart looks like the trend Chart from the HANA
Triple Exponential Smoothing results.