An intelligent business forecasting system

The main objective of this paper is to explore the possibility of the integration of expert systems technology with a forecasting decision support system. A prototype of an intelligent business forecasting system, called IBFS, has been developed by the authors. Like general DSS, IBFS has a relational database, a model base that contains most of the forecasting models provided in the many commercial forecasting packages, and a user interface. The main feature of IBFS is that a rule-based expert system is integrated to assist the user in selecting appropriate models based on the user's requirements and data patterns. The system also assists in performing, graphing, evaluation, combining and monitoring the models in a systematic fashion.