Small business organisations need short-run estimation and forecasting, and a model that has limited data requirements. Statistical techniques currently used are linear in approach, depend on the choice of the data set’s start–end period, and have low statistical reliability. The ensemble empirical mode decomposition approach is not constrained by these limitations or by the non-stationarity and non-linearity attributes of data. As an illustration, the Indian Index of Industrial Production time series is used to develop a coincident indicator of movements in the index that is simple to model, uses real-time data, and makes accurate forecasts.