J Eric Wilson

Eric Wilson calls Kentucky home and is a global thought leader in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), demand planning, and business forecasting, with more than 25 years of experience working across industries and regions. Eric is an award-winning professional in his field and always had writing, culture and history enthusiast, and storyteller as a hobby. He is a Thought Leader, Influencer, Accomplished Author, Public Speaker, and Dad. (and big foodie)

His career has taken him around the world with hands-on operational roles to advising organizations on how to improve alignment, decision-making, and performance in increasingly complex business environments.

What has always driven Eric is not just the mechanics of planning, but the people behind it. Over time, he began to notice that the biggest challenges in global organizations were rarely about tools, data, or process. They were about how people think, communicate, and collaborate across cultures. That realization led to years of research, conversations, and real-world observations that ultimately became Beyond Borders.

His prior works:

- In 2016 Eric wrote “Cultural Cycles” (Georgetown Grassroots Publications, 2017) which was a five-year project and was the coming together of his professional life and personal passions where he uses history and analytics and most of all the readers own intuition and logic to explain the seemly rhythmic nature of history and current events.

- One of the breakthrough books in this field is “Predictive Analytics for Business Forecasting” (Graceway Publishing Company 2020) brings the advancements and future of business forecasting and planning to a new era of planners and data-junkies.

- In 2021 with his passion for storyteller, he co-authored a book with his sister DINO: Tall Tales from a Simpler Times Up on the Hill. It is basically a fun enjoyable read about a boy (named Dino) growing up in a coal camp in the 1940’s and finding trouble and unreal situations.

- In 2024 he co-authored another business process book through Graceway Publishing Company that is now the premier reference book in his field. Practical Guide for Sales and Operation Planning S&OP/IBP.

Currently, Eric serves as the Director of Thought Leadership at the Institute of Business Forecasting (IBF), where he focuses on advancing the field through research, content, and education. He is also a consultant, speaker, and host of the IBF On Demand podcast, where he engages with professionals and leaders from around the world.

Through his work, Eric aims to simplify complexity, challenge assumptions, and help organizations operate more effectively. He is passionate about bridging the gap between strategy, process, and culture especially in global environments where alignment is both critical and difficult.