Driver-based planning identifies and focuses on the key business drivers (metrics that significantly impact performance) to create strategic plans. Identifying the right business drivers and translating them into actionable metrics is crucial for accurate forecasting, reducing reliance on extrapolation of historical trends that often fails during market shifts.
Driver-based planning offers several significant advantages when applied to forecasting, including improved strategic alignment, real-time adaptability, better cross-functional collaboration, greater scenario planning capability, and actionable insights for management.
We support organisations in developing integrated driver-based planning capabilities that connect operational performance to financial outcomes, enabling leadership teams to model scenarios, optimise resource allocation, and make data-driven strategic decisions with greater confidence.
Areas we support with our expertise include:
- Assessment of business metrics, and identification and selection of actionable metrics
- Systematic approach to finding leading indicators
- Strategic benchmarking techniques
- Driver analysis capability building
- 80/20 method for prioritising business drivers
- Implementation of driver-based planning
- Driver-based forecasting versus incremental approach for forecasting
- Combination of expert judgement with driver-based as well as statistical forecasting
- Scenario planning and “what-if” analysis, and
- Rolling forecasts to navigate business uncertainty.