Decades of research has shown definitively that effective forecasting yields tangible financial benefits, but primarily only the most sophisticated organizations realize these benefits. Part of the challenge is that the financial and operational cost of best-in-class forecasting for many organizations will outstrip the anticipated financial benefits. 

This session argues that forecasting should first be considered a risk mitigation strategy whose goal is to optimize its real aim: the balance of customer expectations and enterprise requirements. And since forecasts are always wrong, our focus should be on reducing the cost of being wrong, rather than blindly chasing a perfect state which is not achievable. Walk away understanding why we forecast, why it's wrong to chase forecast accuracy and how to calculate the cost of inaccuracy.