Sales Forecasting Managing in the Global Economy and Outsourcing Offshore

“Sales Forecasting, Managing in the Global Economy, and Outsourcing Offshore” Please respond to the following:

When deciding whether or not to outsource offshore, list the key factors the manager should consider, aside from maximizing profits. Which of these key factors do you believe are the most influential?

Key factors that should be considered when deciding whether or not to outsource offshore include finding qualified vendors and workers, protecting intellectual property rights, foreign exchange rates, foreign governmental regulations and policies, social and economic climate, and additional costs such as transportation. The most influential factor to me would be the governmental regulations and policies. In some countries, corrupt governments can seize property at will. For a U.S. company, there would be no recourse to recover these assets.

Optional: (You may substitute one of the above discussion prompts). 

Consider the sales pattern shown in the data set below: 

Using the regression feature of Excel, compute the equation of a trend line to forecast sales in 2014 and 2015.  Note, you can use ‘Year’ as the explanatory variable or the ‘Time Index’ as the explanatory variable, but not both in the same equation.  In your opinion, is this a good equation for forecasting future sales? Why or why not?

Except for two years where sales decreased slightly, sales have been trending upward. In my opinion, this would be a good equation for forecasting. In addition, the confidence level or R2 for this model is at 0.954. This indicates that sales are trending with year.