Understand the need for everyone to realise the importance of managing your assumptions and how targets can drive behaviour

 - Consider the importance of assumptions in your models
 - Ensure understanding of the impact of variances through the day and between people
 - Build your stakeholder engagement

In many organisations forecasting is limited to volumes of contacts or work, but we can do so much more. Whether we are forecasters or analysts, applying these techniques to our other metrics can open up a wealth of opportunities for improvement.

- Learn how using forecasting techniques can open up new opportunities in your organisation.
- Hear how innovation awards finalists are putting this into practice

Learn the role planning plays in implementing your strategic objectives.  Understand the importance of your role and how you can help others.
 - Understand how the strategic objective is implemented into a forecasting, scheduling and real-time plan.
 - Learn about the importance of effective data checkpoints, change governance and hand-overs 
 - Play apart in driving continuous improvement and become the nerve-centre of the business

This course is part of the 'strategic analyst' series of webinars, designed to help everyone in analytical roles become a more active contributor to their organisation’s strategic narrative.

In this webinar we will explore:

-    What is strategy 

-    Benefits of working at the strategic level 

-    Making sense of your organisational strategy

-    Forecasting with you strategy in mind

-    Influencing strategy through forecasting

The setting of an arbitrary blanket target of say +/-5% forecast accuracy highlights that an organisation does not truly understand the nature of forecasting. Explore the key responsibilities of forecasting and how to take a holistic view when setting measures of success. Learning outcomes include:

- What does good look like? Explore the key characteristics of an ideal forecast and key considerations to develop understanding and learning.
- Define your purpose. Understand how forecasting can support your business strategy and impact it can have on customers and colleagues.
- Creating the right measures. Understand different perspectives and develop a holistic framework of success measures.

This module provides an introductory understanding of:

 - the fundamental inputs and outputs of the forecasting processes.
 - the role of forecasting within the planning cycle 
 - the characteristics of best in class forecasting teams as evidenced throgh The Forum's standards-benchmarking programme