Imagine if annual, quarterly, and monthly forecasting were completely rethought. Imagine if they didn’t take up literally half of your team’s time. How many companies spend six months on their AOP process (or longer!)? And the minute your year starts, it’s outdated! So you go into quarterly and monthly LEs. The time spent is astronomical, because it’s not just finance… Everyone gets to be involved! And the iterations are painful. How many times have you said “just give me the number and I’ll get there”?
It’s time to rethink it all and get there as much as 20%, 30%, 50% faster — with improved accuracy. It’s time to challenge the norms and think big! And the recent SAP and Databricks partnership can help kick-start that change. Businesses now have an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize financial forecasting, sales planning, and operational decision-making. Traditionally, forecasting has been burdened by human-driven data preparation, fragmented insights, and reliance on static historical data. It’s time to transition from manual preparation to a human-in-the-loop approach leveraging SAP’s rich data ecosystem and integrating external factors.
Why Forecasting Needs an Overhaul
Traditional forecasting relies heavily on FP&A, sales, operations, marketing and other teams manually preparing data, and adjusting for outliers. While these methods have driven business decisions for decades, they are slow, reactive, and often inaccurate. The challenges include:
- Siloed Data: Enterprise data is often locked in SAP systems and difficult to integrate with external market factors. In addition, each function responsible for inputs, does so in their format creating integration difficulties.
- Static Forecasts: Many companies base their forecasts on historical trends without accounting for dynamic, real-time influences. Future assumptions are often manual and based on instinct, or human interpretation of data.
- High Human Involvement: Analysts spend more time preparing data than deriving strategic insights.
The SAP-Databricks partnership disrupts this paradigm. By leveraging AI, organizations can eliminate data silos, enrich forecasts with external data, and achieve near-instant predictive modeling.
The SAP & Databricks Advantage: AI-Driven Forecasting at Scale
The SAP and Databricks integration allows businesses to create more accurate, data-driven forecasts by combining SAP’s mission-critical data with external intelligence. Key advantages include:
Scalable & Real-Time Analytics: Databricks enables real-time scenario modeling, allowing businesses to respond quickly to economic changes, supply chain disruptions, and customer demand fluctuations for those monthly updates that require so much work.
- Unified Data Landscape: Databricks seamlessly integrates SAP and non-SAP data without complex ETL processes. This ensures businesses have access to a single, real-time source of truth.
- Automated AI-Powered Forecasting: Machine learning models dynamically analyze SAP’s structured data along with external variables to deliver AI-driven projections across all business areas.
- Human-in-the-Loop Decision Making: Instead of preparing data, teams focus on interpreting AI-driven insights, validating projections, and optimizing strategies.
Forecasting Use Cases Impacted by SAP & Databricks
With this powerful integration, forecasting can be completely reimagined across multiple domains. My personal experience in these scenarios leads me to believe there is a better way. Using progressive means for forecasting doesn’t have to mean you lose understanding of the inputs. No more is this all a “black box” with limited understanding of the “why” of the output. Modern tools allow you to understand the inputs and outputs, even if you’re not manually deriving them.
- Financial Forecasting & Planning: AI-driven models predict revenue, expenses, and profitability based on historical SAP data and real-time market conditions.
- Sales & Demand Forecasting: Enterprises can leverage AI to predict sales volumes based on historical performance, economic indicators, regionality, sales tools, and competitive analysis.
- Supply Chain & Inventory Forecasting: SAP data on procurement, logistics, and vendor performance, combined with real-time external factors, ensures optimal stock levels and reduced waste.
- Operational Planning & Cost Forecasting: Organizations can model cost scenarios using dynamic data from SAP financial systems, external cost drivers, and inflationary trends.
- Marketing & Trade Promotion Forecasting: AI can analyze consumer sentiment, seasonal trends, and sales performance to optimize marketing investments.
- Field Sales Performance Management: Forecasting sales rep performance helps organizations drive incentive structures and compensation planning.
- Scenario Planning & Sensitivity Analysis: AI-powered models can simulate multiple business conditions, allowing enterprises to evaluate strategic responses to economic shifts, supply chain disruptions, and geopolitical changes.
Why Now? The AI-Driven Future of Forecasting
The shift from human preparation to human-in-the-loop forecasting isn’t just a theoretical concept—it’s an imperative for enterprises looking to stay competitive. With AI adoption projected to surge in the coming years, businesses that fail to integrate AI-driven forecasting will lag behind those who embrace real-time insights.
The SAP and Databricks partnership provides organizations with the technology needed to eliminate bottlenecks, accelerate time-to-insight, and enhance forecast accuracy. By leveraging the structured, mission-critical data within SAP and integrating it seamlessly with the Databricks AI ecosystem, enterprises can unlock a new era of forecasting—one that is automated, intelligent, and always ahead of the curve.
What’s Next?
This is the moment to rethink forecasting from the ground up. The SAP and Databricks integration empowers enterprises to harness AI, automate data processes, and drive strategic decision-making with greater accuracy. By shifting from human-driven data preparation to AI-powered, human-in-the-loop forecasting, businesses can achieve faster insights, eliminate inefficiencies, and gain a decisive competitive edge in the data-driven economy.
Are you ready to transform your enterprise forecasting with SAP and Databricks? Request a strategy session to explore how AI-powered forecasting can improve accuracy and efficiency in your business.
* This content was originally published on Nousot.com. Nousot and Lovelytics merged in April 2025.
