通过滚动预测来浏览危险曲线

大多数通过长达数月的年度财务计划周期工作的人会承认该过程被打破。这是耗时的，劳动的且不灵活的。

Moreover, we now realize these rigid annual budgeting cycles don’t adapt well to today’s fast-moving environment. We simply can’t foresee a crisis or seize new opportunities 12 months in advance. This reality has forced many companies to consider moving to rolling forecasts, which are specifically designed to address the only true business constant: change.

For example, consider the 2020 holiday shopping season. Who would’ve predicted that leading logistics providers would place shipping limits on主要的全球零售商？Or the need to absorb massive swings in supply and demand? Or the rapid shifts in inventory, operations, and staffing from brick-and-mortar channels to e-commerce? A rolling forecast allows you to account for a variety of scenarios. And it provides you the resilience and agility to confidently refocus in the midst of massive disruption.

滚动预测有助于围绕盲曲线计划

A traditional annual plan serves many needs: identifying strategy, articulating cohesive goals that investors and executives can use as benchmarks, specifying how they’ll be measured, and providing accountability.

但是，年度计划就像计划公路旅行一样。您有一个根据里程和路线应花费多长时间的想法，但是有很多未知数。如果您遇到出意外的事情，例如由于事故而导致的绕道或延迟，或发现没有失踪的吸引力怎么办？严格的时间表不可避免地会破坏或有机会成本。

相比之下，滚动预测不仅提供了更高的灵活性，而且还提供了更准确性。Instead of making projections just once a year for the next 12 months (which means that by the end of the year you’re only looking ahead a month or two), the rolling forecast always extends at least 12 months out from the current date, getting an update every month or quarter. It often extends 18-24 months out, or even longer if needed.

So the secret of a rolling forecast is that it’s made up of annualplans— plural. It still delivers strategy, goals, performance measurement, and accountability, and it’s ready to serve as a conventional annual plan for investor and regulatory needs. But instead of planning around a calendar or fiscal year, it combines the detail view of the traditional annual plan with the multi-year outlook and wide-reaching goals of the strategic plan – while being updated throughout the year.

Turning the battleship isn’t as hard as you think (with the right tools)

Despite all the prospective benefits of rolling forecasts, some believe there’s a built-in flaw – extra work to make sure their frequent updates are reflected in all the versions of the annual plan used by different departments, geographies, and functions. I ask them to consider two things:

首先，许多公司already无论是地区，业务部门还是市场，都难以在其战略领域获得大量观点，因为这些领域的独立因素都可以显着改变这些预测。传统的年度计划将它们锁定为假设通常在一两个月内过时，因为很难“扭转战舰”。滚动计划使领导团队可以根据财务，劳动力，供应链等的一系列数据集和假设来检查多个方案，并做出灵活，及时的决策。

Second, rolling forecasts take full advantage of digital transformation efforts companies have made over the past decade. Modern digital platforms let everyone on the planning team, even scattered across a hundred home offices in a dozen time zones, work off the same set of assumptions. A change to budget figures made by one person will be reflected on everyone else’s desktop within moments.

Your teams will love that rolling forecasts digitize what has been a very manual process. And they’ll find less of their work ends up scrapped. Moreover, instead of concentrating the planning efforts into 2-5 months of intensive effort at the end of the fiscal year, often involving long hours and late nights, the new approach spreads the planning work more evenly throughout all four quarters.

通过滚动预测来导航

我们已经进入了加速决策的年龄，您的计划工作需要反映这一点。现在，企业必须减少提出问题和获取答案之间的延迟，同时提高准确性和见解。而且，您需要灵活性来评估多种情况并迅速实施它们。

With a rolling forecast, you can better align your business outlook with a realistic view into those targeted strategic areas, especially as things change. And functional groups can make confident decisions more quickly around hiring, operational needs, and demand and supply planning, which can directly impact revenue and profitability goals

The move can start immediately

πvot to rolling forecasts can start the moment you make the commitment. Here are some key steps to help your organization embrace this shift:

● Determine a time horizon that makes sense for your business. Retailers might consider an 18-month rolling forecast, as their industry is highly seasonal. A business that depends more on major capital investments (let’s say a telecom planning a 5G rollout involving lots of installations) may prefer a 24-month or greater rolling forecast to accommodate long-term plans.
●确定您需要多少细节 - 但也认识到您何时达到回报率的点。对于许多组织而言，详细查看本季度是有意义的。但是，随着他们进一步了解未来，他们会变得不那么细粒度，因为性能既难以预测，又更加耗时。（这是一个很好的机会，可以审查您的组织在过去几年中汲取的所有数据来源。哪些是最有用的指标？并且有什么新来源会更丰富您的计划吗？）
● Determine what data can be forecasted using history and drivers – which means they can auto-populate. That way, you only need to manually populate those categories by exception.
●准备组织。改变“我们一直以来的方式”，即使它承诺具有更好的准确性，更多的敏捷性和更简化的方法，也可以培养滚动预测的思维方式也不是一件小事。我知道其成功过渡的组织包括领导力的大公告，这是一份有关发布会亚搏彩票手机版免费下载发起的通讯，回答了问题并著名的小胜利，以及办公时间进行公开讨论。每个人都感觉像是该过程的所有者。
● Use your rolling forecast to spot anomalies and outliers in the plan sooner. This flexibility is a key benefit of the rolling forecast model – you can analyze, run scenarios, and determine any adjustments needed to make the most of changing circumstances.

最后，你需要正确的技术that aligns your data, processes, and people. Spreadsheets are simply not equipped to handle rolling forecasts. Anaplan offers the single source of truth that spreadsheets don’t (not to mention state-of-the-art calculating and modeling power), plus greater agility than heavy, inflexible financial and ERP suites.

有兴趣了解有关滚动预测的更多信息吗？下载this free ebookfeaturing guidance from Anaplan’s top executives about why and how to switch from a hardwired, calendar-driven process to the agility of rolling forecasts.