ABSTRACT
The corporate planner should always indicate the probable extent of the accuracy of forecasts. For a five-year-ahead forecast it could well be as much as 20 per cent. For a twenty-year-ahead forecast, it could be at least 50 per cent. All forecasts are subject to error and no forecast should be made that does not have, prominently displayed, an indication of the range of errors associated with it. Although this extra information renders the production and the use of forecasts more difficult and complex its absence can make a forecast grossly misleading. A more practical way of reducing error is to cross-check the forecasts in much the same way as one cross-checked a projection. Generally speaking, there is not a great deal a corporate planner can do to reduce errors beyond a certain point. Both the timing and the extent are liable to severe error.
