Scenario Planning is future prediction of our business or industry. And by predicting the future we can plan well in advance accordingly.
Most of the business makes the predictions on the basis of most likely scenarios. But scenario planning suggest that we should create Best case scenarios and worst case scenarios also.
To prepare the detailed scenario we must have to decide the Key drivers of our business which are important to our business but are uncertain in future.
We all agree that decision making should be based more on data and analysis than intuition and gut feeling.
But the problem here is that it’s difficult to gather and analyse the data and second, the analysed data or information tells you about the past and cannot give absolute indication of future.
So what to do to predict the future?
Fortunately there is a tool that we can use to predict future and make better choice in long run.
It’s Scenario Planning.
Other concepts that we have seen mostly focuses on most likely outcome.
Scenario Planning is therefore forces the company to think about the other possible outcome and therefore allow you to plan for it.
It would be easy to do Scenario Planning if you list out uncertainties in your business.
We can produce scenarios as below,
- Best Case scenario
- Worst Case Scenario
- Most likely scenario
(It is highly suggested to refer example once)
Education Industry:
Identify key driver of Education Industry of current situation which is uncertain in future or will impact the future.
Adaptability of online education by students can become key driver in future for education institutes.
Artificial intelligence and other technologies are also the key drivers in the education industry.
Here we have tried to create a scenario briefly for example only.
Assume that we are running an Face to face Coaching institute of ACCA qualification and other related professional courses.
Most likely scenario –
The equal importance will remain for face to face education and online education. Increased importance of Professional qualifications and Masters qualification.
Artificial Intelligence will help tutor to explain the concept in easy manner.
Best case scenario –
Online education will remain small proportion in education and mostly post-graduation courses will run online.
Worst case scenario –
Online education will dominate and because of online education the competition will also increase and so market will become price sensitive. Gaining the competitive advantage will be difficult.
Artificial Intelligence will replace the many tutor’s jobs.
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