Thomas Tileston, Warner Home Video's executive director of data management, explains that his company has one shot to forecast product demand correctly as 40-45% of retail sales are generated during the first week of a DVD release. For example, three Harry Potter movies sold more than 68 million DVDs last year, and brought in more than $4.75 billon in 2004 sales. So how significant is it for Tileston's team to forecast sales correctly? Absolutely critical.

Just a year before the Harry Potter releases, Tileston's team was projecting sales with 40% inaccuracy. In other words, the company either produced 40% more or fewer copies than the number consumers actually brought home. The cost? Potentially millions of dollars in revenue. In an effort to streamline forecasting for accuracy and timeliness, Warner deployed a Teradata Warehouse that holds nearly a trillion pieces of data.

The system consolidates all of the information and provides an enterprise view to Tileston's sales and marketing team. In addition, unit sales from retailers are loaded daily so data is never more than 24 hours old. Projections are returned in just over an hour and Tileston's team has increased its forecasting accuracy within 5% of actual sales (2005).

Baseline's Hands On Community explores the Know-it-All in Warner Home Video's server room as well as other large corporations (Cingular, Carlson Hotels, Quicken Loans, Denver Public Schools).