Future Ready

The recent crisis in the financial markets has exposed seriousflaws in management methods. The failure to anticipate and dealwith the consequences of the unfolding collapse has starklyillustrated what many leaders and managers in business have knownfor years; in most organizations, the process of forecasting isbadly broken. For that reason, forecasting business performancetops the list of concerns for CFO's across the globe.
It is time to rethink the way businesses organize and runforecasting processes and how they use the insights that theyprovide to navigate through these turbulent times. This booksynthesizes and structures findings from a range of disciplines andover 60 years of the authors combined practical experience. This ispresented in the form of a set of simple strategies that anyorganization can use to master the process of forecasting. The keymessage of this book is that while no mortal can predict thefuture, you can take the steps to be ready for it. 'Goodenough' forecasts, wise preparation and the capability totake timely action, will help your organization to create its ownfuture.
Written in an engaging and thought provoking style, FutureReady leads the reader to answers to questions such as:
* What makes a good forecast?
* What period should a forecast cover?
* How frequently should it be updated?
* What information should it contain?
* What is the best way to produce a forecast?
* How can you avoid gaming and other forms of datamanipulation?
* How should a forecast be used?
* How do you ensure that your forecast is reliable?
* How accurate does it need to be?
* How should you deal with risk and uncertainty
* What is the best way to organize a forecast process?
* Do you need multiple forecasts?
* What changes should be made to other performance managementprocesses to facilitate good forecasting?
Future Ready is an invaluable guide for practicingmanagers and a source of insight and inspiration to leaders lookingfor better ways of doing things and to students of the science andcraft of management.
Praise for Future Ready
"Will make a difference to the way you think about forecastinggoing forward"
--Howard Green, Group Controller Unilever PLC
"Great analogies and stories are combined with rock solid theoryin a language that even the most reading-averse manager will lovefrom page one"
--Bjarte Bogsnes, Vice President Performance ManagementDevelopment at StatoilHydro
"A timely addition to the growing research on managementplanning and performance measurement."
--Dr. Charles T. Horngren, Edmund G. Littlefield Professorof Accounting Emeritus Stanford University and author of manystandard texts including Cost Accounting: A ManagerialEmphasis, Introduction to Management Accounting, andFinancial Accounting
"In the area of Forecasting, it is the best book in themarket."
--Fritz Roemer. Leader of Enterprise Performance ExecutiveAdvisory Program, the Hackett Group