Online sales made up 20.9 percent of all retail sales in 2021.

Delivery service providers such as USPS, UPS, and FedEx predicted huge holiday deliveries.

According to a Dec 6 2021 article on CNBC, "The delivery giant estimates it will drop off an estimated 100 million more packages than it did from Black Friday to Christmas in pre-pandemic 2019".

However, an article published by WSJ on March 12, 2022 stated that "Delivery Contractors Blame FedEx for Bad Holiday Season, Ground-division contractors say bad projections, new payment terms are hurting profits as costs rise".

Apparently, as far back as 2016, FedEx uses macroeconomic data to forecast demand.

What can go wrong when predictive analytics fails?

ELAINE analyzed the March 12, 2022 WSJ article

ELAINE found several challenges that put Fedex in the hot seat, for example:

"More than 800 of FedEx's 5,000-plus US contractors signed a letter to company officials in January, citing problems with shipping forecasts from FedEx.. . The letter, a copy of which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, said that the package shortfall and new payment terms for the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas yielded less pay during the peak season than year ago, while costs were significantly higher"

Logical Analysis helps to scope out qualitative issues of business operations; it elicits pain points facing by businesses. The following is a link to this analysis:

ELAINE Logical Analysis of WSJ article

ELAINE analyzed FEDEx's previous two quarters' earning transcripts.

Logical analysis on FDX's Sept. 2021 revealed issue related to (LABOR,BUSINESS,FEDEX GROUND) among other labor related matters, months before it becomes an issue for its Ground contractors. On the same report, it identified the following key focus: "Our forecast assume continued growth in US industrial production and global trade, a gradual improvement in labor availability, current fuel price expectations and existing tax regulations"

Logical Analysis of FDX's 2nd QTR earnings logical analysis tells the story from management's point of view. Ground was identified as one of its headwind back in Dec. 2021: "... our results for the second quarter also included the following headwinds; $90 million related to investments in the ground network..."

In retrospect, one can see how a misguided forecast can be a causation to issues as elicited in the WSJ article.