TABLE OF CONTENTS Planning, of course is not a separate, recognizable act . Every managerial act, mental or physical is inexorably intertwined with planning. It is as much a part of every managerial act as breathing is to the living human.
C. George, The History of Management, 1972.
Business forecasting involves the prediction of what could happen in the future and business planning involves the calculation of what is required to fulfil the forecast, i.e. make the future happen as it is forecast. Thus a business plan uses a forecast as an initial point of departure and then adds the detail to reflect how the particular process or project is intended to proceed. Business plans are generally set in the future and involve making a series of assumptions about how the variables in the plan will behave in future periods.
Business plans are helpful with the decision-making process of an organisation. There are many types of business plan, which range from simple verbal or written descriptions of what is to be achieved, through diagrammatic representations such as Gantt charts to highly analytical numeric reports.
There are many definitions of planning, but perhaps one worth quoting is from Ackoff [1] who said:
Planning is required when the future state that we desire involves a set of interdependent decisions; that is, a system of decisions The principal complexity in planning derives from the interrelated-ness of the decisions rather than from the decisions themselves
In the context...
