IBM

Forecasting & Scenario Development with AI

IBM

Forecasting & Scenario Development with AI

LearnQuest Network

Instructor: LearnQuest Network

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Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Beginner level

Recommended experience

2 hours to complete
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace
Gain insight into a topic and learn the fundamentals.
Beginner level

Recommended experience

2 hours to complete
Flexible schedule
Learn at your own pace

What you'll learn

  • Break a time series into trend, seasonality, and noise and measure forecast quality with MAE and MAPE.

  • Generate AI-assisted forecasts and apply clear rules for when to accept or override them.

  • Build base, best, and worst-case scenarios with probability weights tied to strategic risk.

  • Construct sensitivity tables and use AI to stress-test assumptions for leadership review.

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Recently updated!

July 2026

Assessments

4 assignments¹

AI Graded see disclaimer
Taught in English

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Build your Finance expertise

This course is part of the IBM Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) with AI Skills Professional Certificate
When you enroll in this course, you'll also be enrolled in this Professional Certificate.
  • Learn new concepts from industry experts
  • Gain a foundational understanding of a subject or tool
  • Develop job-relevant skills with hands-on projects
  • Earn a shareable career certificate from IBM

There are 4 modules in this course

Learn predictive forecasting for financial planning and analysis (FP&A) from the ground up. This module builds the time-series foundation every analyst needs to produce forecasts the business can trust. Break a time series into its core components — level, trend, seasonality, and noise — and connect business drivers like volume and price to the patterns in your historical data. Compare simple forecasting methods, including naïve, seasonal naïve, moving average, and exponential smoothing, and learn to judge them with forecast accuracy metrics such as MAE, RMSE, and MAPE. Using holdout (out-of-sample) testing against a naïve benchmark, you'll select the method that produces a reliable rolling forecast — the core skill behind demand forecasting, revenue forecasting, and confident, data-driven financial decisions.

What's included

5 videos1 reading1 assignment

Learn how FP&A analysts use AI to forecast faster without losing control of the numbers. This module teaches you to write structured AI prompts that generate a baseline forecast, read prediction intervals and confidence ranges in plain business terms, and evaluate AI output against simple statistical benchmarks using forecast accuracy metrics such as MAE, RMSE, and MAPE. You'll learn human-AI collaboration and forecast governance for financial planning and analysis (FP&A): when to accept, question, or override an AI forecast; how to document overrides with reason codes and audit logs; and how to produce a blended, explainable forecast that controllers, auditors, and finance leaders can trust. Ideal for anyone working on AI forecasting, rolling forecasts, demand and revenue forecasting, predictive analytics, and AI-assisted decision support.

What's included

5 videos1 reading1 assignment

Scenario analysis is a core financial planning and analysis (FP&A) skill for decision-making under uncertainty. This module teaches scenario analysis and scenario planning from the ground up: how to build base, best, and worst-case scenarios, how to translate business assumptions into quantitative driver inputs, and how to weight outcomes by probability to calculate an expected value. Learners connect each scenario to strategic risks, contingency plans, and risk registers, and they learn how scenario analysis differs from sensitivity analysis and everyday what-if analysis. It is ideal for finance professionals, analysts, and managers who want practical, beginner-friendly skills in scenario modeling, probability-weighted forecasting, risk management, budgeting and forecasting, and capital-allocation decision support — with no coding or advanced statistics required.

What's included

6 videos1 reading1 assignment

Learn to pinpoint what really moves your numbers and turn uncertainty into decisions leadership can act on. This module teaches sensitivity analysis and scenario planning for financial planning and analysis (FP&A): how sensitivity analysis differs from scenario analysis and from simple what-if changes, how to build one- and two-variable sensitivity tables (data tables) in a spreadsheet or planning tool, and how to rank drivers by impact using tornado-chart thinking. You will also use AI to stress-test assumptions, generate scenario variants, and curate a focused short list of base, best, and worst cases for executive and board review. Build practical skills in driver-based planning, forecasting, decision support, risk analysis, what-if modeling, and AI-assisted scenario generation — no coding required.

What's included

5 videos1 reading1 assignment

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LearnQuest Network
210 Courses1,005,953 learners

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¹ Some assignments in this course are AI-graded. For these assignments, your data will be used in accordance with Coursera's Privacy Notice.