Section 4: Excel/Google Sheets, data analysis and reporting

Scenario 38: A simple trend and forecasting exercise for weekly demand

Level: Advanced · Tools: ChatGPT Data Analysis, CSV or XLSX, and Python-based analysis

Who and in what situation

Derya, a category operations specialist at an e-commerce business in Adana, is preparing weekly orders for product categories for a planning meeting. Her goal is not to make firm commitments, but to make trends and uncertainties visible.

How it is done today

Derya plots past weeks on a line chart and projects forward from the latest week. She notes the impact of campaigns separately.

How to do it with AI

  1. She uploads a CSV containing date, category, order and campaign fields to ChatGPT. ChatGPT can use time series analysis, regression and various methods. [75]
  2. She requests a quality report on missing dates, outliers, duplicates and category changes; she asks it to show the code, outputs and assumptions. [71]
  3. She asks, “Which method is suitable for this data, and which assumptions, if violated, would make the forecast unreliable?” and, if necessary, asks it to explain ARIMA or seasonal decomposition. [75]
  4. She backtests against historical observations, has campaign weeks marked separately and reports the result as three scenarios with stated assumptions.

Example prompt

Check {the order time series I uploaded} for missing weeks, outliers and campaign effects. Explain the appropriate forecasting method and its assumptions. Backtest against historical data, show the Python code and generate three scenarios with stated assumptions for the next {period}.

Evidence and real-world example

No published independent case study was found for this e-commerce scenario. OpenAI’s official sources document that ChatGPT can perform time series analysis, regression, ARIMA and Python-based calculations. [71] [75]

Points to consider

ChatGPT may initially choose a method that does not fit the purpose; OpenAI recommends reviewing the results, code and assumptions. [71] The analysis environment cannot make external web requests or API calls; if current price or campaign information is needed, provide it separately from an approved source. [71]

Sources for this scenario

  1. Data analysis with ChatGPT (help.openai.com)
  2. Extracting insights with ChatGPT data analysis (help.openai.com)