NFPA Provides Industry Statistics That Improve Your Decision Making

By Eric Lanke, NFPA President/CEO

One of NFPA’s core strategic objectives is to provide our members with timely and accurate industry statistics and business intelligence that support improved decision-making. There are a lot of ways for members to get engaged in our programs dedicated to advancing this objective.

Our Participation-Based Programs provide unique value to NFPA members because they are built by and for the members themselves. In our Confidential Shipment Statistics (CSS) Program, members submit their sales and order data, and NFPA, working with a third-party provider, aggregates that data to publish monthly reports that are broken down by both market segment and by product. These help members accurately determine their market share by comparing their sales volume to the total volume of all other members making the same product or selling into the same market. In our State of the Fluid Power Industry (SOFP) Survey, members provide a quick read on where they see their businesses going in the next month, the next quarter, and the next year. The survey results appear in a simple forecast for the industry, which has been statistically proven to lead actual conditions by six or seven months, providing participating members with a clear planning advantage over those not participating. And in our Customer Market Survey (CMS), members report their sales by customer market, the aggregated data from which reveals the total volume of fluid power products being sold into each of our industry’s key customer markets.

Samples of all three reports are available at https://nfpahub.com/stats/market-information-services/. To get your company participating, contact Eric Armstrong at earmstrong@nfpa.com.

At this time of intense uncertainty, NFPA’s Forecast Reports provide key information to help you make better decisions. The one on U.S. markets is prepared by ITR Economics and provides detailed forecasts for 28 customer markets important to the fluid power industry. The one on global markets is prepared by Oxford Economics and provides detailed overviews and forecasts for our key markets in 68 different countries. They are indispensable tools for NFPA members working to develop an industry-wide outlook and strategy for their businesses.

To download the latest forecast reports, which are updated either monthly or quarterly, depending on the market, visit https://nfpahub.com/stats/market-information-services/.

The latest addition to our portfolio is our Regional Demand Estimates Report. Prepared by Oxford Economics, this report profiles the geographic distribution of fluid power products to end-use industries by state and includes estimates for fluid power sales dollars and fluid power sales percentages. This new report helps with benchmarking your company’s regional sales performance and determining sales targets and goals for your company.

Go to https://nfpahub.com/stats/info-category/regional-demand-estimates/ for all the details.

Most of these programs – and several more – become even more valuable when used in combination with our free analysis tool, the NFPA Stats Toolkit. This is one of the most important and most under-utilized weapons in NFPA’s arsenal. Members who use the Stats Toolkit turn data into intelligence. They find leading indicators for their businesses, they create custom forecasts, and they make smarter decisions for their companies. We’re focused on getting many more members using this critical tool. We see it as central to our mission of strengthening the fluid power industry. And so, we want to offer anyone who’s interested in learning more a free demo so you can better understand what the Toolkit does and how you can leverage it for your business. Please contact Eric Armstrong at earmstrong@nfpa.com to get something scheduled as soon as possible.

And finally, it’s not too soon to mark your calendar for our next Industry and Economic Outlook Conference (IEOC), which will be held August 16-18, 2021. This live event will include all the speakers members have come to rely on, including Alan Beaulieu and Alex Chausovsky of ITR Economics, Michael Reid of Oxford Economics, and Eli Lustgarten of ESL Consultants – as well as detailed market forecasts for Construction Machinery, Agriculture Machinery, Heavy Trucks, Metalworking/Machine Tools, and other industrial markets. Also watch for an announcement for our next Economic Update Webinar, scheduled for Thursday, May 27^th at 10:00 am (Central Time).

All of these activities mean that NFPA is the best source for industry statistics and market intelligence for fluid power. If you would like your company to become more engaged with NFPA, please reach out to me at elanke@nfpa.com or (414) 778-3351.