Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting

If you are working on forecasting, you may be interested by the book from Steve Morlidge and Steve Player: Future Ready - How to master business forecasting. Whereas "Dance with Chance" is more about the limitations of forecasting, the present book is about the way to apply forecasting to existing businesses.Let's be clear from the very beginning on the fact that this book is not about the technical aspect of forecasting. You will neither learn about forecasting techniques, nor about evaluation criteria. However, you will learn critical factors to successfully integrate forecasting into your company: purpose, time, models, measurement, risks and process.The book explains critical concepts such as the difference between prediction and forecasting. Authors go further by describing the Cassandra paradox: "a perfect prediction is perfectly useless". Future Ready is also full of forecasting examples and case studies.Morlidge and Player put the emphasis on key issues of implementing forecasting in a company and one can see their experience in the domain. Authors provide a list of symptoms and issues with forecasting. For example, managers may believe too deeply in forecasting. To be noted an excellent and comprehensive glossary at the end of the book.To conclude, Future Ready is a perfect complement to a more technical forecasting book. It will teach you what experience usually bring to you: how to avoid pitfalls. It is thus an inevitable resource for anyone implied in forecasting.

I worked in large company FP&A (financial planning & analysis) for a good part of my career. I've often found business forecasting books to be simplistic and fairly antiquated rehashes of standard management accounting textbook budgeting processes.Not this book. I find myself nodding along to almost every page as these guys lay out in a very clear manner a lot of the hard-earned lessons I've spent years learning. Some of the gems in here:* The difference between a budget, a forecast, and target, and a plan (this chapter is worth the price of the book alone);* How to set up the forecasting process;* How to build a rolling forecast (i.e. how frequently you should reforecast and how long your forecasting window should be);* How to integrate multiple sources of information throughout your organization into one coherent forecast.There are plenty of others.I have hundreds of business books and this is one of the 2 or 3 I refer to repeatedly. This is really outstanding stuff.

As someone who teaches the subject of forecasting, I have never seen a better book that describes how to integrate the design and capabilities of forecasting models with the actual practice of business management. This is both a conceptual work and valuable practical guidance. Readers are urged to think carefully about how forecasts will be used, and to design their models to avoid the numerous pitfalls and traps that the authors enumerate. Whether you are constructing your own forecast model, or using a commercial variety, this book will help to make your choices explicit concerning the level of detail needed, the right frequency, and coordinating realistic forecast horizons with your own industry's and organization's planning capabilities and needs. This book is a solid work from true experts.Paul Fogel

Future Ready was a great read. Full of very specific information about how to turn financial forecasts into a tool that helps you run a better business. As a financial guy, it has always shocked me how many otherwise smart entrepreneurs and executives don't insist on having financial projections (down to the cash flow level) as part of their approach to managing and growing their business. Kind of like strapping a blindfold on when you get into your car to drive to the office in the morning - not a smart idea!You will love the book. Tons of experience and wisdom in there to help you use forecasts wisely.

This book could have been a lot better. .I was hoping for a book about the principles of business forecasting supported by many case studies from the authors' personal experience , and technical content dealing with integration of economics , maths , stats and management accounting techniques for forecasting. Instead this book tries to deal with the philosophy of forecasting , not with forecasting itself. You will find unjustified personal opinions , absurd generalisations , some very silly examples.I went through it twice , once fast , once slowly. It did NOT REALLY help me to master business forecasting.

One of the best written books for forecasting.

This is a very well written and important book for corporate planners. I highly recommend it if you want your company to be more agile.

I like the systematic approch in the book. It covers organisational as well as technical issues of forecating. Furthermore, it is plainly written.

Excellent in showing the building blocks of good forecasting and budgeting processes in large or small organisations.The authors cover with great clarity the rationale for forecasting, its challenges, definitions and offer useful advice in how to design the forecasting, target setting and budgeting processes of businesses and organisations in different sectors by providing actionable rules and tools.Recommended for those looking to either re-design or improve their organisations' planning processes.N.B. Some typos left unchecked but nothing major.

I am a small business owner. I have recently discovered the need to forecast to grow the business and this book is good food for thought. However, like a lot of business books, in an effort (I suppose) to increase the sale price of the book (or to write a book at all), the author has really laboured his points. There are some good examples from real businesses but also an awful lot of waffle to fill space including sailing anecdotes, details of the author's shower and Greek mythology.

Very good. There are better places to get an overview of the practical techniques of forecasting, but this book encourages you to step back and think about why you are forecasting. I found that very helpful, and I ended up changing my approach slightly.

A great book that has changed my view of traditional budgeting

I must read it one day. Obviously it didn't hook me from the start... but then it's not meant to be that kind of book...