PROC FORECAST OR PROC ARIMA ?

[soori]

Hi,

I just want to forecast the sales for the future. Which procedure will solve my problem ? Ist that Proc Forecast or Proc Arima ?

Please suggest with explanations.

[udo_sas]

Hi -

SAS/ETS software provides access to many different techniques for time series forecasting - for an overview check out: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/etsug/63939/HTML/default/viewer.htm#etsug_intro_sect012....

As a start you might want to check out PROC ESM which will create forecasts based on exponential smoothing models with optimized parameters.

PROC ARIMA and PROC UCM for example can be used to create more advanced models later on, which also allow to incorporate independent variables for example.

You will find plenty of examples in SAS/ETS software documentation - for example:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/etsug/63939/HTML/default/viewer.htm#etsug_esm_sect024.ht...

Thanks,

Udo

[soori]

Thanks Udo