2022 Planning Center
Planning and forecasting are a challenging occupation, made more difficult by the necessity connecting long-term strategy to current and anticipated operational activities, financial performance, and risk framework.
Risk. Uncertainty. Volatility. Unpredictability. All these threaten the success of your strategy (not to mention the accuracy of your forecast)! Finance’s response is to maintain multiple points of view of what can happen in the future—various plans with different outcomes, triggers, and KPIs alerting the business to changes in the market. Those points of view are both internal and external to your organization.
Pulling varied and trusted sources of data into your organization enriches your point of view, reduces biases, and grounds your assumptions. For that reason, AFP has compiled several resources available from this page to aid your budget cycle and continuous planning efforts.
Whenever I see a forecast written out to two decimal places, I cannot help but wonder if there is a misunderstanding of the limitations of the data, and an illusion of precision.
–Barry Ritholtz, Investor, Author
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
–Yogi Berra, Baseball Player, Philosopher
If you have reason to think that yesterday's forecast went wrong, there is no glory in sticking to it.
–Nate Silver, Statistician
Micro-economic benchmarks from your fellow FP&A practitioners
about their current and future spending. MORE.
The AFP FP&A Guide to Scenario Planning, for thinking through situations
where forecasting falls short of out-of-the-box thinking. Learn more.
