We were chatting earlier about the importance of forecasting and scenario planning in the context of Business Recovery as we emerge from the lockdown phase of this crisis. The feedback from many was the need to keep things simple. So, I was wondering what are the top 4 challenges around planning our recovery?

Some of the most frequently quoted have been.

1. Timing

When will the lockdown restrictions begin to ease and when can I restart business and begin to deliver services and activities? What impact will seasonal variations have on demand and over what period should we be forecasting.

2.  Protocols

What are the rules (e.g. Social Distancing) that will impact on restarting business and how will this impact on service capacity and the shape of our service offering?

3.  Demand

How will points 1 and 2 impact on levels of demand. What behaviours and habits have changed, how attractive will our service offering be to existing and potentially new customers?

4.  Supply

Are any of our supply chains likely to be compromised and if so when and to what extent. This could be people issues, employees, contractors or other supplies and services. How are these factors going to affect our plans to restart and ensure business and service continuity?

Our in-depth and data driven approach to reviewing business and services helps our clients to reimagine the future, identifying opportunities to improve performance, create innovation and transformational change. They also unlock potential to increase efficiency, generate additional income and improve service quality. The tools we use help us to develop and visualise accurate forecasts and develop multiple scenarios based around where organisations consider their key levers to be.

The short video attached shows how we can create a baseline forecast for what would have happened (to income, expenditure, demand, sales etc) had Covid-19 not occurred. The forecast considers, things like trends and seasonality, known cost pressures etc. We can then create a set of scenarios which can be compared to the baseline forecast to determine where the key gaps are and quantify the impacts.

We can also slice and dice the forecast and scenarios to better understand what the impact would be for individual and groups of venues or specific cost centres.

This then allows us to create our detailed recovery action plan. Where employee resources are a significant factor, our tools then allow us to create hour by hour, day by day, week by week profiles and “heat maps” of demand that can be used to inform how organisations budget, plan resources and staffing levels moving forward.

If you think this might be useful for you as you develop your recovery plans moving forward do not hesitate to get in contact.