Forecasting for Non-Forecasters – Challenge & Defend your Forecast, Create Value

Outline:

Course Objectives: Few people can say they are ‘married’ to Excel yet for many individuals involved in commercial decision making the outcome and successful defence of an asset forecast can be of very-high impact on one personally, their team or organisation. This course is non-academic, real-world oriented and case-study based. During 4h, participants will go on a ‘forecasting journey’ from TPP inception, forecast and assumption development to presenting in front of a Product-Review-Committee.  This journey is designed to empower participants to:

1. Demystify the theory and process of long-term forecasting (LTF)
2. Become a better defender and challenger of forecast assumptions
3. As a result, to play a more active role in discussions (even if it is only by asking better questions)
4. As a result, to engage in value creation and asset optimisation
5. Understand risk and uncertainty and learn how to best communicate it
6. Use the forecasting process to guide the development of viable commercial assets

Forecasting is evolving from a process traditionally focused on accuracy with a functional focus to a process used to create value through x-functional team discussions.

Course Topics:

The topics that will be covered by this course include:

1. Business forecasting – most common situations when understanding forecasts is critical for the discussion
2. Brief overview of the most commonly used forecasting approaches
3. What are the underlying frameworks and accepted beliefs typically used to generate key assumptions?

Case Study (Product X TPP, Assumption Matrix and Forecast Model)

4. Setting the scene
5. Raising awareness of potential challenges, weaknesses and uncertainties in forecasts
6. Data sources / incomplete data and how to identify and reduce uncertainty (e.g. triangulations)
7. Scrutinize forecasts and map uncertainties
8. HML (high/medium/low vs. Probability Based Scenarios

Break-out groups:

9. Forecast robustness / weakness – Dealing with uncertainty, how to mitigate and how to communicate
10. Role play and cross examinations: Challenging and defending a forecast

This course will, as much as possible within the given time, consider different stakeholder perspectives: The investor / senior management perspective, the industry / value lead perspective, the agency perspective and the Excel/forecasting expert perspective.

The course is very interactive. During the second half there will be break-out groups working  with a real-world case study to practice ‘survival’ in commercial planning meetings. The day will end with a wrap up discussion and key take aways.

Who this is for: Market researchers, analysts and business insight executives informing forecasts in industry and agency, asset leads and future brand managers, scientists and clinicians in R&D, biotech CEOs and BizDev executives defending or challenging forecasts. In other words, this is aimed at everyone involved in business planning processes where forecasts are being used or assumptions being discussed without anyone being expected to build a model from scratch.