In our business we modelled up a handful of relatively broad forecast scenarios (e.g. high/moderate/low activity over various business lines) and then concentrated on really firming up our resource optimisation strategies based on each. From this we could tune our resourcing decisions reasonably well based on relatively short forecast periods.
For example, Catfish Alley talks about redoing his forecasting monthly - my take from that is that I can only really rely on his numbers for 30 days. But although he may not be able to tell me with any accuracy what my sales are going to be 3 or 6 months from now, he can probably give me a good estimate of which way the wind is going to be blowing. If I have a really good scenario-based optimisation strategy, that will be enough for me to start pulling some levers today - which means I'm just going to be fine-tuning things when we get to his accurate 1-month horizon.
It's not the same as knowing what your sales are going to be six months from now, but you can still make surprisingly good decisions. I don't know about others I definitely feel that COVID showed us how overly reliant we had become on forecasting (which is important but will never be a silver bullet).
Exactly it. Things changing often so forecasting months in advance is a tough ask. I’ve got a solid trend building now and it’s getting easier.