Is Forecasting the right option in VUCA world?

It is clear to many of us that the world around us is changing.

Today, in our world, there is a high speed of change, ever increasing uncertainty, high complexity and increasing ambiguity.

How are we reacting to this world?

There are 2 possible options:

• Popular Option: Increase the predictability of your business
• Right option: Decrease lead times and improve flexibility of supply chain

Over the 15 years, I have come across hundreds of forecasting tools which I have evaluated. Guess what’s common in most of them ?

Almost all of them try to sell you the idea of increasing the predictability of your business.

These tools help you in improved collaborative planning, they become a single hub where business users can build, deploy, maintain and share ‘models’ all geared to ultimately help you increase operational performance.

The problem is because these tools are very data heavy, in an environment of long lead times, it is very easy to build the illusion of progress. Managers always believe that things will be better in next quarter!

Everyone WANTS to believe that my business can become more predictable. Easily forgetting that in today’s environment there is a high speed of change, ever increasing uncertainty, high complexity and increasing ambiguity.