Forecasting without historical data

@Thimios ,

I think @Keith and @mspanic both have had laid out some excellent suggestions above.

One other suggestion I would make is in the best book on forecasting I’ve ever read, Rob Hyndman’s and George Athanasopoulos’ “Forecasting: Principles and Practice” they have an entire chapter dedicated to “Judgmental forecasts”, often used when there is a complete lack of historical data.

At the end of their chapter in section 6.8 they provide a detailed bibliography of other resources and key papers published over the last 20 years addressing the main judgmental forecasting approaches: Delphi, Adjustments, Analogy, Customer Intentions and Scenarios.

Amazingly, the authors have made this entire book available online for free. Here’s the link:

I think you’ll find this material extremely helpful in addressing your question.

All the best.

– Brian

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