Amazon Forecast is a fully managed service that uses machine-learning to provide highly accurate forecasts.
Today, companies use everything from simple spreadsheets and financial planning software to accurately forecast future business outcomes, such as product demand, resource requirements, and financial performance. These tools create forecasts by looking at historical data, also known as time series data. These tools might attempt to predict the future sales for a raincoat using only its past sales data. The assumption is that the past determines the future. This approach is not able to accurately forecast large amounts of data with irregular trends. It is difficult to combine data that changes over time (such price, discounts, and number of workers) with relevant independent variables such as product features and store location.