Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management: Radically Rethinking Management for a Volatile World, Third Edition

Chapter 14. Looking to the Future

	I think there is a world market for about five computers.
	--Thomas J. Watson

In the first edition of this book, I rashly made a few predictions about the future. At the time I commented that the only certainty about forecasting is that you will be wrong more often than you are right and predicted that at best only half of my predictions would come anywhere near fruition. How did I do?

Not too bad actually. Exhibit 14.1 shows my predictions for some of the benchmarks that were discussed in Chapter 3. For the future I predict that there will be an acceleration of many of the best practice trends described in Part Two, driven by the continued convergence of people, information, computing, and communications. Most notable will be changes in overall productivity and operational efficiency, accounting and reporting standards, the use of technology, the importance of the budget, and, last but by no means least, the role of finance executives and their organizations.

FAST, FLAWLESS EXECUTION WILL BE THE DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTIC OF WORLD-CLASS COMPANIES

What I wrote in 2002:

Benchmarks show that the average organization's performance management processes are anything but fast and that execution remains far from flawless. Even today's best performers have significant opportunity for further improvement in cycle times, information quality and availability, analyst productivity, and technology leverage. The next decade will see no let-up in the growth in ...