Tag: Business Forecasting

  • Success with Forecasting – A discussion with Pieter Coens

    Please meet Pieter Coens. Pieter is the Director of Finance & Control at Landal GreenParks in the Netherlands. He started his career in public accounting and joined Landal over 16 years ago. Pieter has held various positions in finance at Landal.

    Landal GreenParks is a leader in bungalow-park management and rental. Landal has over 65 parks with a total of approximately 11,000 chalets. With 47 parks in the Netherlands, Landal leads the Dutch bungalow -park market. Outside the Netherlands, Landal has parks in Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

    Pieter gave a great presentation about Landal’s planning and forecasting processes at the IBM Finance Forum in Amsterdam on May 24th, 2011. We were able to have a quick chat at the event.

    Christoph Papenfuss: You have implemented IBM Cognos to automate your budgeting and forecasting processes. What have you accomplished so far?

    Pieter Coens: IBM Cognos currently helps us create an annual budget along with a monthly forecast. For that purpose, we have implemented several elements including models for Rental Revenue and our P&L.

    Christoph Papenfuss: How did you manage your processes before that?

    Pieter Coens: We used to manage our processes with a myriad of Excel files. It was very difficult. We ran into various issues such as managing excessive file sizes that slowed down the network, dealing with sluggish recalculations, difficulties tracing interdependencies etc.. Aggregating the different files was extremely cumbersome and time-consuming. And of course, there are the associated audit issues with spreadsheets.

    Christoph Papenfuss: How are you benefiting from the implementation?

    Pieter Coens: IBM Cognos has allowed us to automate a lot of the steps in the process such as preparing, distributing and aggregating planning templates. We are also able to develop more intricate models that provide us with better insights. Overall, we feel that our finance team and the business users are now able to focus more on the actual planning activities rather than the administrative tasks that I described earlier. My team is much more productive.

    Christoph Papenfuss: You have an annual budget and also a monthly forecast. Who is involved in the process?

    Pieter Coens: Finance is in charge of executing the process. But the business owners have to work and develop their own budgets and forecasts. They are in charge of entering their data in the models. Finance plays the role of the coach: we help the business make sense of the numbers and we guide them through the forecasts and budget iterations. This approach provides us with several advantages: By actively involving the business we can obtain more accurate and timely data. We also feel that the business is able to gain better business insights by actively working with their budgets and forecasts and the associated monthly actuals. Last but not least, Finance has more time to focus on value-added tasks such as performing analysis.

    Christoph Papenfuss: You have a solid forecasting process. How often do you update the forecast and how far do you look into the future?

    Pieter Coens: We currently use a monthly forecast. This allows us to anticipate and react to market changes. We ask the business to perform a detailed forecast for the next two months only. The remaining months until year-end are automatically calculated as a trend of the 2-month forecast. We found that creating a detailed forecast further out than 2 months does not necessarily result in very accurate data and it also takes a lot effort. We want the business to focus their energy on the short time-horizon and only forecast the know effects throughout the Full Year.

    Christoph Papenfuss: You are proponent of driver-based models. Can you give us an example of how you have implemented this? Also, what are the benefits for the organization.

    Pieter Coens: Driver-based models allow us to increase the speed of the budgeting and forecasting exercise. Also, we are able to perform better analysis at month-end and during the planning activities: Instead of just looking at an absolute variance, drivers allow us to review this from different angles such as price or volume effects. Food & Beverage Revenue, for example, can be calculated as Number of Guestnights * Average Spend on Food & Beverage.  The associated Cost of Sales are a percentage of the Food & Beverage Revenue that has been calculated.

    Christoph Papenfuss: How did you go about implementing the IBM Cognos solution?

    Pieter Coens: We decided to follow a modular approach and started with a few smaller projects. This allowed us to build critical skills and develop success much earlier. This in turn led to a situation where the business heard about our accomplishments and they started asking for additional projects e.g. forecasting on Operational Management Information.. Change management is a lot easier if the business users ask for projects instead of us pushing them to accept

    Christoph Papenfuss: What else are you planning to do?

    Pieter Coens: We are definitely looking to reduce the level of detail in our models. More detail does not mean higher accuracy. On the contrary, more detail requires more work and it does not necessarily drive accuracy. We are also looking to implement additional models such as cash flow and predictive modeling/forecasting for our Yield department.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Thank you very much, Pieter! Good luck with your implementation.

  • The ultimate rolling forecast workshop

    Having fun at the workshop

    Forecasting is a critical topic for many companies these days. No big surprise: the volatility and the speed in the world requires organizations to stay agile. About four years ago, my team and I started working with several customers and thought-leaders (David Axson, Steve Morlidge) to collect best practices for forecasting in these turbulent times. The results of the countless hours of talking, brainstorming, analyzing and reading are captured in the IBM Cognos ‘Best Practices in Rolling Forecasts’ workshop. This workshop ended up being way more successful than any one of us would have ever imagined. I have personally delivered over 100 of these events in the past three years.

    THE WORKSHOP FORMAT

    Forecasting is a complex topic and we were able to collect a full library worth of experiences. But simplicity rules and we selected the most interesting aspects

    David Axson is showing the way!

    to fill the agenda for a half-day workshop. That creates more focus and the attendees leave with just enough ideas to drive change in their organizations and without feeling overwhelmed. The overall focus is on the business process and not software. While we share a lot of best practices, the workshops are very interactive. We usually have extended and very fruitful discussions amongst the participants. Many attendees stay after the official event ends to continue their idea exchange. This is one of my favorite parts. There are always many things to learn.

    BEST PRACTICES AND MORE

    Static vs rolling forecasts?

    So, what do we cover? A lot! The focus is clearly on proven practices that were identified by our customers. But it is also important to look beyond those things. We therefore injected some thought-provoking ideas from our thought-leaders. And each workshop we run typically provides new ideas, stories and experiences that we leverage to enhance the materials.  It would be too much detail to cover in this post but here are some of the things we discuss:

    • Is a rolling forecast right for your organization?
    • What’s the right time horizon? 90-day? Four quarter? Six quarter? Three year?
    • How often should you update the forecast?
    • How do you use a rolling forecast as an early alert of threats and opportunities?
    • What is the role of scenarios?
    • What role can driver-based modeling and tools play in the forecast process?
    • How do you sell the need for a rolling forecast?
    • What does the business case look like?
    • How can you measure the efficiency and effectiveness of your process?

    IT’S YOUR TURN NOW!

    If you are considering to make changes to your forecasting processes or if you are working in the IT department supporting Finance, you should join one of these workshops. It is a great opportunity to meet other finance & IT professionals and to get solid ideas. Believe it or not, but we have had several customers attend multiple events. They simply liked the interaction with the other professionals so much and they felt that they got a lot of value out of each workshop. Check out my events page to find out about upcoming dates or simply drop me a note. Hope to see you soon!

  • A discussion about forecast errors

    Forecasting continues to be a hot topic. My recent interviews with Steve Morlidge continues to be very popular. Also, ‘Franz the Frog’ sparked some interesting discussions behind the scenes. Given the strong interest in these topics, I reached out to a friend who has spent a lot of time and effort driving solid forecasting processes.

    Please meet Ulrich Pilsl. He provides a different perspective. Ulrich currently works as an Interim Manager in Munich. He spent over 14 years at Softlab / BMW Group (later Cirquent / NTT Data Group). As a member of the executive board, he held different senior executive positions including CFO of a consulting subsidiary and as the Head of Controlling & Business Administration.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Forecasting is a key focus area for many finance professionals. But many organizations are struggling to obtain an objective view of the future. What are some of the key problems?

    Ulrich Pilsl: The biggest problem I see is complexity. Many companies have bloated processes that are too detailed. It simply takes too much time and people have a hard time differentiating between what is important and what is not. There is no clear focus. Also, management tends to have a hard time managing the process. My advice is to simplify and to get rid of excessive detail. More detail does not create more accurate forecasts. On the contrary: the more detail, the less accurate forecasts tend to be for the above mentioned reasons.

    Christoph Papenfuss: What is the main problem with inaccurate forecasts?

    Ulrich Pilsl: Inaccurate forecasts lead to a serious confidence problem. Shareholders don’t like surprises. It gets worse when surprises are caused by poor forecasting efforts.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Are positive and negative errors equally problematic? Let’s take a look at a typical sales or business forecast. Some people tend to create very conservative forecasts and often end up outperforming. Isn’t this better than creating a very ambitious forecast and then coming in lower?

    Ulrich Pilsl: This is an interesting but common situation. First of all, positive and negative errors are equally problematic. Both type of errors can create serious management challenges apart from the already discussed confidence problems. In regards to this specific situation, one might be tempted to say that it is a good thing for a sales person to continuously beat his or her forecast. However, this can create some serious challenges. Let’s take a look at a consulting company. Low sales forecasts indicated low resource requirements. Hiring efforts might be slowed down and the business might quickly end up in a situation where they do not have enough talent available. Business is lost. Customers might loose confidence in us as a trust-worthy business partner. I therefore strongly believe that both negative and positive errors require serious attention.

    Christoph Papenfuss: What should the Controller do to help minimize forecast errors?

    Ulrich Pilsl: The Controlling department should show some ‘tough love’. They have to challenge the departments to deliver realistic forecasts. We found that it is critical to provide suggestions and to jointly develop scenarios with the business managers. Finance basically acts as a tough but fair coach in the process. This continues in the the monthly and weekly management meetings: We openly discussed the forecast results and challenged the numbers. It is obviously the job of the Business Controller to moderate this process. Last but not least, we found that it sometimes makes sense to create top-down adjustments that reflect upside and downside risk.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Based on your experience, does it make sense to measure forecast accuracy? If yes, how often and at what level did you measure accuracy?

    Ulrich Pilsl: It depends on the organization. This reminds me of a quote by my former manager who said: “Most companies are over-controlled but under-managed.” A team that understands the value of a forecast will usually deliver solid forecasts. Measuring forecast accuracy won’t necessarily improve it. I do believe, though, that it makes sense to measure it if the organization has challenges with the forecast process. Especially in the case of a management team that does not see the value in the forecast. It might make sense to add an accuracy target to the annual objectives. We had a variable goal “internal quality”. This allowed us to substantially change the mindset of some managers. The goal was set once per year.

    Christoph Papenfuss: How do you utilize forecast accuracy measures? Should you communicate the numbers to the organization or is this something that should stay within the walls of the finance department?

    Ulrich Pilsl: In my opinion, it does make sense to communicate forecast accuracy to the management team. But it makes no sense to communicate it to the whole organization. The aim is to improve forecast quality and not to blame the management in the organization.

    Christoph Papenfuss: What can Finance do to help create a culture where people are happy to create meaningful and objective forecasts?

    Ulrich Pilsl: Finance simply has to be the role of a coach and consultant for the business. It is our role to educate and to support the business.

  • An imaginary conversation with a weather frog

    European folklore believed that frogs kept in a glass would be able to forecast the weather. People filled some water in the glass to keep the amphibian happy, and then added a small ladder. A climbing frog would indicate good weather, whereas a frog hanging out in the water would show bad weather. This belief especially stuck with people in the German speaking countries where weather forecasters are typically called ‘Weather Frogs’ (Wetterfrosch). Well, weather forecasters do one thing well: forecasting. They are the true masters and I thought that we could get some insights from one of them. It is frog migration season in Bavaria and I happened to have found one who is willing to talk to me. Please meet Franz the Frog. Franz resides in Bavaria, Germany where people recognize him as a trusted master forecaster.

     

    AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION WITH THE FROG

    Christoph: How is life as a master forecaster? Your pictures are every on the side of the roads these days. You must be pretty busy? Spring is known for its volatile weather.

    Franz the Frog: All cool here in the pond. Thanks for asking. We were quite busy up until yesterday. That’s when we finished our quarterly forecast. I am looking forward to jumping around for the next few weeks.

    Christoph: But wait a second! It’s a volatile climate out there. How can you just sit there, jump around and not forecast whenever things change?

    Franz the Frog: Dude, I hear ya’. But the big boss here in the pond decided that 2-3 forecasts per year are totally fine. Plus we have so much other stuff to do. Also, do you realize how much work we have to do to complete a forecast?

    A weather frog

    Christoph: Sorry, this was news to me.  Then tell me, why exactly is this so much work?

    Franz the Frog: Helllllooooooo!!!!! Each forecast starts with us looking at weather patterns for the past five years. Just simply gathering the data that is stored all over our pond takes us forever. Our big boss in the pond also wants us to create detailed variance reports for those years. That takes about a month. To create the actual forecast, we turn over every single leaf in our pond. And we record every little rain drop. That takes a lot of time. Get it?

    Christoph: Oh…I see…a lot of detail. But a lot of detail should result in higher accuracy right? My wife Jen complained about your reliability the other day. She claimed that she would not even ‘pack a suitcase for vacation’ using your information. Errr…please don’t shoot the messenger.

    Franz the Frog: Watch it, buddy! I will stick my tongue out here in a second. What do you expect? We get paid by our big boss in the pond. If the boss is happy, the flies are happy and we are happy. The boss decided that it’s best for us to provide a forecast that tells you guys exactly what you want to hear. Last year we saw rain coming. Your wife complained that she did not want any rain that particular week. She said:’Ahh, this stupid forecast. Rain is driving me crazy. It should be sunny!!!’. That got my big boss in the pond really upset. And guess what happened: no pay. That made our decision easy: we would eliminate a lot of pain and frustration if we simply forecast what everybody wants to hear.

    Christoph: Oh…ok. That is so not cool. Let’s change topics. What type of tools do you guys use to do your forecasts? I mean, we’re in the year 2011 so  I suspect that you guys have some cool tools…like that PC game Frogger?

    Franz the Frog: Frogger rules!!! If you like Frogger, you will be happy to hear that we are still using the same platform. No changes. Here, take a look: We have special leaves from a searose that was created in Redmond, WA’. Those leaves allow us to play with the data that we collect. The nice thing is that everybody in our pond has a ton of those searoses flying around. And the other guys love those leaves. The all create their own versions. But do me a favor and DO NOT talk to the green guy over there: he has to collect all the leaves at quarter-end. He hates his job. A bunch of my colleagues sometimes play a joke on him and swap out leaves or hide them. Others change the carefully thought-out leaf structures by ripping a holes in them or by chewing on them. You should see his face when the leaves don’t stack!!! Haha…RRRiibbitt.. Hilarious.

    Christoph: Holy tadpole! That sounds like a tough job. Can you trust the data then?

    Franz the Frog: Probably not. But hey…that’s the way the pond has been for a long time. It worked in the past it should work in the future, right? We have been around for thousands of years.  And the big boss is happy and we’re getting paid—what’s not to like?

  • Future Ready? A discussion with Steve Morlidge

    Steve Morlidge, Future Ready

    The IBM Finance Forum 2011 events have officially started in Europe. These events are designed for Finance professionals seeking to deliver stronger business insight to their organizations. Apart from being a great networking opportunity, we focus on sharing a lot of best-practice knowledge. Customers share their stories. And IBM also bring in great guest speakers like Steve Morlidge who share their tremendous knowledge in the finance area.

    Steve MorlidgeSteve Morlidge will be joining many events across Europe this year. He is a true thought-leader in the area of financial performance management. In 2010, he released a ground-breaking book called ‘Future Ready – How to Master Business Forecasting’. Together with co-author Steve Player, Steve shares a lot of valuable knowledge that he gained in over 25 years as a senior finance executive working for international companies like Unilever. He is also an active member of the Beyond Budgeting Roundtable (BBRT).

    Steve Morlidge and I were able to talk over the phone right before the first Finance Forum event in Zurich.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Many companies are still developing annual budgets. Is this approach outdated or is there a place for the annual budget?

    Steve Morlidge: I believe that conventional budgeting is dead, or at least very much on the way out. It takes too long, hinders responsiveness and fosters all kinds of damaging political behavior in enterprises. Companies still need to do things like setting targets, and this may still be called ‘budgeting’, but it is a long way from the traditional process many of us grew up with.

    Christoph Papenfuss: What are some of the key issues associated with the traditional forecasting process?

    Steve Morlidge: In my view most companies do not understand the difference between budgeting and forecasting. As a result, forecasting is done in too much detail, but not frequently enough. More importantly, the mindset is very often all wrong. Budgeting teaches us that gaps (between target and prognosis) are bad, whereas the primary purpose of forecasting is to detect deviations from plan so that corrective action can be taken; so unearthing such discrepancies should be positively encouraged, not punished.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Many people talk about rolling forecasts. Are rolling forecasts a viable approach?

    Steve Morlidge: They are, but too often people underestimate the task. In my book, rolling forecasts are forecasts with a consistent horizon: 12 months, 15 months or whatever. As a result, at any one time a significant chunk of the horizon may extend beyond the fiscal year end. Many of the processes upon which forecasting relies – like activity planning and so on – are anchored on the annual budgeting process so sourcing the information you need beyond the financial year end can sometimes be a challenge, unless these supporting processes are remodeled at the same time. Also, conventional annual target setting, particularly if it is tied to incentives, can distort a rolling forecast process to the point that it falls into disrepute. As a result, my advice to people is to fix the ‘in year’ forecast process first, before you tackle rolling horizons and the ‘out year’.

    Christoph Papenfuss: We all know the saying ‘You get what you measure.’ Does this apply to the forecasting process?

    Steve Morlidge: Absolutely. In fact, if you don’t measure the quality of your forecast process and, most importantly, act upon it, you have no kind of guarantee that the forecast can be relied upon. Proper measurement – closing the feedback loop – is the only thing that separates forecasting from guesswork, and in my book, 95% of corporate forecasts fall into the latter category.

    Christoph Papenfuss: Many organizations utilize spreadsheets to manager their forecasts. What role does technology play to improve the forecasting and planning processes?

    Steve Morlidge: At one level technology isn’t important at all – the main deficiency with business forecasting is the processes used and the thinking that lies behind it – not the toolset. Having said that, few companies can sustain a successful forecasting process without technology that enables them to streamline processes, provide appropriate modeling capabilities, support rapid reiteration, provide insightful measures, communicate results effectively and so on. Tools don’t make a master craftsman, but without them nothing would ever get built.

    Christoph Papenfuss: You will be delivering a keynote presentation at many IBM Finance Forum events. Can you share a few things you will be talking about?

    Steve Morlidge: My main message is that the practice of forecasting is broken, not because we don’t have the tools, but because we don’t know how to use the tools we have. I will be sharing what I have learned about mastering forecasting articulated in the form of six simple principles.

    You can find out more about Steve on his website: http://www.satoripartners.co.uk. To see a full list of the Finance Forums 2011 events and to sign up, click here.

  • Finance Forum – EMEA v1.0

    Just a quick hello from the road. It’s one of those very exciting yet extremely busy weeks. The IBM Finance Forum events finally kicked off in Europe. The first event was held on Wednesday in the beautiful town of Wiesbaden in Germany.

    Which door would you take?

    Wiesbaden is known for three things: It is the capital of Hessen, there are some natural springs that have healing effects and there is one of the few well known casinos in Germany. It is the beautiful casino building in the heart of Wiesbaden where the first Finance Forum for the season kicked off. We had a great crowd of well over 250 finance & IT professionals. I had the honor to deliver the IBM keynote. Delivering the keynote at these events is always exciting. But it is especially exciting this year: there are so many great and game-changing things to show.

    Apart from many interesting customer & IBM speakers, we also have a few really interesting external keynote speakers. In the US, David Axson will be delighting the audiences. He is a true performance management visionary and inspirational speaker. Make sure to check out his latest book called ‘The Management Myth Buster’. In Europe, Steve Morlidge (author of the book ‘Future Ready’) will be sharing interesting insights about how to improve your forecasting processes. And there are some other speakers as well. Stay tuned for updates. Check out this link to find out about all the dates.

    Below are some impressions from the day. I really hope to see many of you at our upcoming events. My personal schedule is update on this website.

    Soundcheck at 7:30am
    How cool is that? Multi-touch planning powered by TM1.
    The Kurhaus in Wiesbaden…how nice is that?
  • IBM Business Analytics at the Gartner BI Summit 2011

    It’s that time of the year! The annual Gartner BI Summit is just around the corner. This year’s edition will take place from January 31st through February 1st at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge in London.

    IBM is one of the main sponsors for this event, and my team and I will be quite busy during those days. We have planned some great activities to connect with our customers, partners and friends. There will be a big booth at the conference where we can meet. Some of our most knowledgeable resources will there. We are really excited to show our Cognos 10 platform. Here is a quick pre-view of some IBM Cognos related activities that might be of interest for you:

    Monday, January 31st:

    • 08:30 – 10:30: The traditional Gartner keynotes should not be missed.
    • 11:45 – 12:30: Panel discussion – Peter Griffiths, our VP for Business Analytics development will participate. I love those panel discussions
    • 12:45 – 13:45: ‘Preparing a BI Strategy’ workshop hosted by @tracyleeharris
    • 14:00 – 16:00: ‘Best Practices in Rolling Forecasts‘ workshop….hosted by me. This is a great workshop for all people interested in finance processes.
    • 16:15 – 17:15: ‘Demonstrating Value’ workshop hosted by @tracyleeharris

    Tuesday, February 1st:

    • 10:30 – 11:15: ‘Navigating Politics & Culture’ workshop hosted by @tracyleeharris
    • 11:30 – 12:00: Our keynote ‘Smarter decisions, better results’. Leah Macmillan will be delivering this presentation and I have the honor to demo our cool Cognos 10 platform.
    • 12:00 – 13:00: ‘Organizing for Success & Building a BICC’ hosted by @tracyleeharris

    I have pasted the detailed descriptions of the workshops on the bottom of this post. We have limited space in all of these. So, please visit us at the booth early enough to sign up.

    You might have noticed that my colleague Tracy Harris will be quite busy at the conference. She actually released a neat book towards the end of 2010. We will have plenty of copies for you at our booth.  If you want, you can also download a copy for free before the conference. Tracy will be spending a lot of time at our booth….so get your questions ready!

    That’s it for now. Looking forward to seeing everybody at the conference. Drop me a note if you want to meet.

    Workshop Descriptions

    Best Practices in Rolling Forecasts Workshop
    This workshop is a highly practical one where our team will share key insights on designing, implementing and using rolling forecasts as part of a best practice performance management process. You will find out whether rolling forecasts are right for your organisation, what the best time horizon would be, and how rolling forecasts can alert you to emerging threats and opportunities.  Discuss the relevance of forecasting, review best practices for implementing a rolling forecast, and identify how you can improve the forecasting process

    Demonstrating Value Workshop
    What kind of ROI do organisations see from BI and PM deployments? How do I
    demonstrate the value of my investment? In this session, learn about building your
    value portfolio for a strategic BI and PM investment including demonstrating ROI,
    justifying your strategy, demonstrating value and how to embrace, enhance and
    extend your investments.

    Navigating Politics and Culture Workshop
    Having trouble extending your BI deployment? Gaining user adoption? Learn some of
    the most common practices and pitfalls that organisations encounter as they
    implement BI enterprise-wide. Find out how they gained executive buy-in, managed
    change, gained adoption and showcased initiatives within their organisation. By
    learning more about these pitfalls and how other organisations have overcome them,
    you will be more prepared for success.

    Organising for Success & Building a BI Center of Excellence Workshop
    In order to be successful at a strategic business intelligence or performance
    management initiative, you need to be properly organised to execute. Learn about
    the value of a Business Intelligence Center of Excellence, and discuss functions and
    structures of these organisations.

    Preparing a Strategy Workshop
    What are the sweet spots of information? What key elements do I need to consider
    when building a strategy? What is my business alignment strategy, my organisational
    and behavioural strategy and my technology strategy? In this workshop we will
    discuss the key elements to consider when building a strategy and roadmap to help
    your organisation become best-in-class using analytics.


  • 3 ways to analyze and communicate Forecast Accuracy

    Analyzing Forecast Accuracy

    What’s the best kept secret in your company? Well, hopefully not your forecast accuracy numbers? Forecast accuracy should not be a calculation that happens behind closed doors. But the numbers should be communicated and analyzed to be really useful. Here are three ways you can communicate and analyze your numbers:

    • The table of shame & glory: One good way to display forecast accuracy is to collect the numbers in a heat map. Collect the numbers for different organizational units in a table and color code the values based on tolerance ranges (green = acceptable, yellow = hmmm, red = absolutely not). The advantage of this approach is that we can easily spot trends and also compare different organizational units. This type of table can also be used to motivate people to take their forecasts seriously. But once again: be cautious with putting too much pressure on forecast accuracy.

     

    • The bar chart of absolute truth: You can also simply compare forecasts and actuals in a simple bar chart. This type of format works ok for a single organizational unit. Having more than one in there makes a messy chart that is not worth looking at. The advantage here is that we can easily spot the absolute differences between the values.

    • The run chart of truth: A very popular way to display the forecast error is to visualize the percentage error in a bar chart (a so-called run chart). This is a great way to very easily spot problem areas and trends. Also, we can easily compare different organizational units.

    Those are three great ways to analyze and communicate forecast accuracy. You will probably want to experiment with all three of them. Many organizations do use these in connection. 

    Good luck with your next few forecasts! If you want to learn more, please join one of our upcoming Rolling Forecast workshops. Simply get in touch with me for an updated schedule.

    P.S.: If you want to read more about measuring forecast accuracy, I highly recommend purchasing Future Ready by Steve Morlidge and Steve Player. It is one of the best books about business forecasting. You can read an interview with Steve Morlidge on this site.

  • 4 additional things to know about Forecast Accuracy

    How is your forecast accuracy measurement project going? I hope the last post convinced you to start measuring this. But there are still some open questions. Let’s take a look at some critical items that you should consider.

    TIME SPAN

    One of the things people often get confused about is the type of forecast accuracy that they should measure. We often create forecasts for many months out. Technically speaking, I could therefore calculate 1,2,3,4,5,etc month forecast accuracy (e.g. I take a forecast value from 6 months ago and compare it to the actuals from today or I take my forecast from last month and compare it with the actuals that just came in). That’s a lot of data! Based on my own experience and discussions with many controllers, I have come to believe that most businesses should focus on a short-term measure (say 1-3 months). The reason for that is simple: the further out we look, the higher the probability for random errors (who can forecast the eruption of an Icelandic volcanoe?). Short-term accuracy is usually more important (think: adjusting production volumes, etc.) and we should have way more control over it than over longer-term accuracy. So, pick a shorter-term accuracy and start measuring it.

    FREQUENCY

    How often should we measure forecast accuracy? Every time we forecast! Why wouldn’t we? Measuring once in a while won’t help us much. The most interesting aspect of this measure is the ability to detect issues such as cultural and model problems. Just make sure to setup the models correctly and the calculations will be automatic and easy to handle. You will soon have plenty of data that will provide you with excellent insights.

    LEVEL

    Where should we measure forecast accuracy? We simply calculate this for each and every line item, correct? Hmm…better now! We already have so much data. I would suggest to look at two key dimensions to consider (in addition to time): the organizational hierarchy and the measure. The first one is simple: Somebody is responsible for the forecast. Let’s measure there. We could probably look at higher level managers (say: measure accuracy at a sales district level as opposed to each sales rep). In terms of the specific measures, experience shows that we should not go too granular. Focus on the top 2-3 key metrics of your forecast. They could be Revenue, Units, Travel Expenses for a sales forecast. The higher up we go in the hierarchy we would obviously focus on things such as Margin, Profit etc.. The general advice is to balance thirst for knowledge with practical management aspects. Generating too much data is easy. But it is the balance that turns the data into a useful management instrument. So, you should measure this at a level where people can take accountability and where the finance department doesn’t have to do too much manual follow-up.

    CAUTION

    But before I finish here, just a quick word of caution. Inaccurate forecasts can have different causes. Don’t just look at the plain numbers and start blaming people. There are always things that are out of our control (think about that unexpected event). Also, there are timing differences that occur for various reasons (think about a deal that is pushed to next month).  We need to go after those differences that are due to sloppy forecasts.

    What about analyzing and communicating forecast accuracy? More about that in the next post. Do you have any other experiences that are worth sharing?

  • Three things every controller should know about forecast accuracy

    Forecast Accuracy

    Forecast accuracy is one of those strange things: most people agree that it should be measured, yet hardly anybody does it. And the crazy thing is that it is not all that hard. If you utilize a planning tool like IBM Cognos TM1, Cognos Planning or any other package, the calculations are merely a by-product – a highly useful by-product.

    Accuracy defined

    Forecast accuracy is defined as the percentage difference between a forecast and the according actuals (in hindsight). Let’s say I forecast 100 sales units for next month but end up selling 105, we are looking at a 95% accuracy or a 5% forecast error. Pretty simple. Right?

    And why?

    Why should we measure forecast accuracy? Very simple. We invest a lot of time into the forecast process, we utilize the final forecast to make sound business decisions and the forecast should therefore be fairly accurate. But keep in mind that forecasts will never be 100% accurate for the obvious reason that we cannot predict the future. Forecast accuracy provides us with a simple measure to help us assess the quality of our forecasts. I personally believe that things need to get measured. Here are three key benefits of measuring forecast accuracy:

    1. Detect Problems with Models: Forecast accuracy can act like a sniffing dog: we can detect issues with our models. One of my clients found that their driver calculations were off resulting in a 10% higher value. A time-series analysis of their forecast error clearly revealed this after just a few months of collecting data.
    2. Surface Cultural Problems: Accuracy can also help us detect cultural problems like sandbagging. People are often afraid to submit an objective forecast to avoid potential monetary disadvantages (think about a sales manager holding back information to avoid higher sales targets). I recently met a company where a few sales guys used to bump up their sales forecast to ‘reserve’ inventory of their hot products in case they were able to sign some new deals. Well, that worked ok until the crisis hit. The company ended up with a ton of inventory sitting on the shelves. Forecast accuracy can easily help us detect these type of problems. And once we know the problem is there and we can quantify it, we can do something about it!
    3. Focus, focus, focus: Measuring and communicating forecast accuracy drives attention and focus. By publishing accuracy numbers we are effectively telling the business that they really need to pay attention to their forecast process. I have seen many cases where people submit a forecast ‘just because’. But once you notice that somebody is tracking the accuracy, you suddenly start paying more attention to the numbers that you put into the template. Nobody wants to see their name on a list of people that are submitting poor forecasts, right?

    BUT……

    Overall, forecast accuracy is a highly useful measure. But it has to be used in the right way. We cannot expect that every forecast will be 100% accurate. It just can’t be. There is too much volatility in the markets and none of us are qualified crystal-ball handlers. There is a lot more to consider, though. Over the next few days, I will share some additional tips & tricks that you might want to consider. So, start measuring forecast accuracy today!