Business Forecasting in the 21st Century

BUSINESS FORECASTING IN THE 21ST CENTURY By Chaman L. Jain, St. John’s University As the marketplace is becoming more dynamic and businessmen are becoming more aware of the importance of forecasting in decisionmaking, the organizational structure, business philosophy, corporate culture, and level of senior management’s support for this function are changing. With that, the landscape of forecasting is changing. Changes are being experienced in corporate culture and business environment, public perception about forecasting, forecasters, approach to forecasting, uses of forecasts and technology. CORPORATE CULTURE AND BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT We are currently experiencing enormous changes in corporate culture and business environment. Command and control strategy for managing business is giving way to autonomous business units with power to develop and implement their own policies. The silo-based strategy is being replaced by collaboration and knowledge sharing not only within an enterprise but also with customers and suppliers. New products are no longer developed in isolation by one department but by a team of experts from different departments. Furthermore, there is now increasing ...