Forecasts can make or break your business

Navigating the modern business world is challenging in so many ways. But one of the biggest challenges you can face is preparing for an uncertain future. Forward-looking forecasts are a key component of planning – both financially and operationally – but they can be fiendishly difficult to get right.

There is a solution. With IBM Planning Analytics / TM1, you can take advantage of the most advanced and dynamic forecasting tool on the market, allowing you to maximise the accuracy of your forecasts without forgoing any of your business’s complexity. Intrigued? Why not try it today?

Let’s improve your forecasts together

Common challenges

Arbitrary cost drivers
Without a sophisticated view of your data, your forecasts can quickly become based on the wrong drivers, leading to inaccurate estimates.
- Lack of contextual data
  When you can’t collect the sort of data that can separate causation from correlation, you can end up choosing arbitrary cost drivers that approximate the truth, but actually fail in a variety of scenarios. Essentially, you’re relying on gut feel rather than your data and that can lead to all sorts of problems.
- Forecasts aren’t robust
  When you use inaccurate cost drivers, your forecasts aren’t robust enough to handle the multitude of changes a business can go through. This can quickly lead to wildly inaccurate estimates just one or two years out. By the time you realise the issue, your decisions have already had a negative impact.
- Precise cost drivers
  Cubewise and IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 offer a comprehensive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) platform that not only ingests all your different data sets, but helps you identify the specific cost drivers that should be feeding your forecasts. By utilising the contextual information coming in from different sources, you can get much closer to dynamic and accurate forecasts that are adaptable to changing circumstances.
Inaccurate revenue attribution
- Lack of granularity
  If you don’t have oversight of where your revenue is being generated, you simply don’t have the levers you need to create a sophisticated forecast. Instead, you’re stuck with relying on basic metrics that hide complexity rather than take advantage of it.
- Simplistic forecasting
  Overly simplistic forecasting doesn’t withstand scrutiny, nor can it account for changes in circumstances along the way. When you make decisions based on simplistic forecasts, you take risks you don’t need to. You have the data available to you – it’s just not accessible to you in the right way and within the right context.
- Drill-down forecast precision
  IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 provides forecasting tools that can harness your company’s complexity to deliver tremendous drill-down precision. Leverage this benefit to create accurate forecasting that uses contextual information efficiently and in an agile way. It’s a game changer.
Forecasting in silos
- Lack of data uniformity
  When your data isn’t standardised and comes from a variety of sources, it becomes difficult to make forecasts that are accurate. You’re likely to make forecasts from a single perspective that is blind to other considerations.
- Incomplete information
  When your forecasting is siloed, you operate from a place of incomplete information. Instead of creating holistic forecasts, you’re bound by the siloed nature of your business operations. This harms the quality of your estimates and impedes accurate forecasting.
- Unified planning and forecasting
  Cubewise and IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 prides itself on delivering unified planning solutions that create truly holistic forecasts. Leverage all the data you have access to and pull it into one place where you can generate high-quality and dynamic forecasts.

Lack of contextual data
When you can’t collect the sort of data that can separate causation from correlation, you can end up choosing arbitrary cost drivers that approximate the truth, but actually fail in a variety of scenarios. Essentially, you’re relying on gut feel rather than your data and that can lead to all sorts of problems.
Forecasts aren’t robust
When you use inaccurate cost drivers, your forecasts aren’t robust enough to handle the multitude of changes a business can go through. This can quickly lead to wildly inaccurate estimates just one or two years out. By the time you realise the issue, your decisions have already had a negative impact.
Precise cost drivers
Cubewise and IBM Planning Analytics / TM1 offer a comprehensive Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) platform that not only ingests all your different data sets, but helps you identify the specific cost drivers that should be feeding your forecasts. By utilising the contextual information coming in from different sources, you can get much closer to dynamic and accurate forecasts that are adaptable to changing circumstances.

Improve accuracy with a unified planning system

Let’s start improving your forecasts today

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Amazon Web Services case study

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