Trendspotting. Coolhunting.

While you might not think that businesses outside the trendy, youth-focused fashion and music markets would have much to learn from the practice of “coolhunting”, there are some key product life cycle principles common to both. Coolhunting is market research aimed at discovering, in their infancy, new trends in youth markets, catching them in the process of becoming ‘cool’, and then capitalizing on that knowledge by being first on the scene to take advantage of it. Coolhunting typically involves on-the-street interviews or focus groups, and there are numerous firms that specialize in providing this service, as well as other retailers and manufacturers that have taken this capability in house. The seamier side of coolhunting involves planting / infiltrating your people and products directly into the market, or paying certain key influencers in order to have them use and tout your product as if it was their own idea.

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Predicting Outcomes, Providing Guidelines, Being Nostradamus

I have a gripe with the accounting profession. My gripe is with the fact that accounting information delivered to most business owners is old news. Stuff happened, the professional properly recorded it and reported on it, you paid your taxes, and that’s that. Game over.

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Budgeting and Planning Software Components: Part 5 - Tactical lPlanning Dashboards with Visualizations

Planning dashboards allow planners to see the whole picture at a glance, determine whether their plans are favorable or not, and provide guidance for where to direct their attention. When budgets are out of alignment or plans are going astray as the year progresses, the visualizations on a planning dashboard say, “look exactly here – this is your problem – this is where you can make an adjustment that will have a real impact – the other changes you’re going to make are a waste of time.”

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The Beatings Will Continue Until Forecast Accuracy Improves

Question: What is the maximum level of accuracy with which you can predict the toss of a fair coin?

Answer: 50%

It does not matter that you’ve set a mandatory minimum forecast accuracy level of 90%, or even 60%. There is no incentive, no bonus, no allocation of restricted stock options that could make me forecast a coin toss at better than 50%, nor any threat or punishment. The only thing threats accomplish are to invent ever more clever ways to tamper with the coin; to cheat.

Which brings us to this important forecasting principle: forecast accuracy is first and foremost a property of the data itself.

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Hosting All Applications in the Cloud

Many business owners will recall when their first in-house computer networks were installed. When the PCs were networked together in an office, it made file sharing and collaboration among team members easier and more efficient. Installing additional applications on the PC was a relatively simple process, and when the new application came with the ability to integrate with another app already on the PC, it was often a fairly simple process to get the two “talking” together. But installing and integrating applications on your personal computer is a bit different from getting multiple applications installed and integrated with a cloud hosting service provider.

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Securely Plan Who, What, Where, and When at the Lowest Level

How do you securely plan who, what, where, and when at the lowest level?

Where planning usually falls down is when you try to marry the planning outcomes to operational decision making. In a plan you make decisions at high levels that are generally thought to be accurate based on historical trends. It’s a best guess using all of the information available at hand, and short of having a bat-phone to Cleo the Psychic, it’s your best option. My problem isn’t with the concept, or whether you use a 2 year CAGR versus a 3-month rolling average, it’s with how the planning assumptions are applied and how execution flows as a result.

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Take a Guess - What is the #1 Issue Holding Finance Back Today?

(This is second in a series of articles addressing best practices towards improving the finance function.) What is the #1 issue that’s getting in the way of Finance delivering game-changing decision support… of Finance consistently being called in when executives are making important decisions… of Finance being regarded as having the utmost competency? EPM Channel…

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