Benchmarking the Management Support for a Forecasting Function

BENCHMARKING THE MANAGEMENT SUPPORT FOR A FORECASTING FUNCTION By Chaman L. Jain, St. John’s University The success of a forecasting function depends very much on people, process, technology and resources. Nothing would happen unless we have a blessing from the top. In this article, we will discuss why we need management support, how much is forthcoming, and whether or not it is getting better over time. MANAGEMENT SUPPORT: A MUST The support of top management is crucial to the success of any forecasting function. Because we need resources to start and maintain a forecasting function, which only top management can provide. Resources are needed to buy forecasting software and/or system, syndicated data, and tools to store and analyze data. We also need resources to build an infrastructure to communicate data/information to different stakeholders within and outside the enterprise. Data used in preparing forecasts is both internal and external. To know how our competitors are doing, we need syndicated data, which can easily run into millions of dollars a year. Buying and installing a forecasting software/system also cost a lot of money. Furthermore, for a forecasting function ...