Tips for Using Trend Forecasting Companies in Business Development

Forecasting trends is a tactic all companies must take very seriously.  A sound business development strategy depends on understanding the direction that the economy and industry is headed.  Sometimes following these trends can be overwhelming for small businesses.  They can always hire an outside firm to help with forecasting them; however the tips that these firms provide are often of little value.

This is a tempting idea for companies, and in theory could be a successful way to improve their business development strategy.  However, many of them seem to have been pulled off the back of a tarot card rather than economic or industrial data.  Understandably, following some of these tips has cost businesses considerably.

In the world of business, we must strive to better understand trending ourselves.  Many of the predictions about how technology and the economy would change in the future turned out to be wrong.  In fact, many of them actually ended up the other side of the spectrum originally predicted.

There has been conjecture that Nettabs would be one of the biggest developments in technology and business.  A few months ago, Deloitte issued a report forecasting some of the trends in technology that would affect companies in every industry and our everyday life.  The first claim they made in the study was that the Nettab would be one of the most successful new developments in technology and would sell tens of millions of units in 2010.

Of course, as we near the autumn of 2010 there is almost no talk about Nettabs.  The few discussions on the topic suggest that consumers find the idea to be ridiculous and businesses have elected not to pursue it.  The advice that Deloitte provided for companies trying to analyze potential opportunities for their production and marketing strategies could have cost them their entire investment.

Also, it is important to remember that Deloitte is a company that specializes in forecasting trends in the technology industry.  When businesses choose to hire another firm to help them analyze trends to help them create their strategy, they may be hiring a company that knows very little about the industry.  They will be relying solely on quantitative data sets with no understanding of what the data actually means.  Following advice from a company that doesn’t know anything about the industry they are following can obviously be very dangerous to a business’s bottom line.

In addition to incompetence, one of the problems with hiring a trend forecasting company is that they can be unscrupulous, just like any other firm.  Many forecasters are no different from amateur psychics with the exception that they do not have any tricks to effectively change the outcomes they are predicting.

One man claims he is the greatest forecaster in the world.  Most of the predictions he has made that came true could have easily been spotted by anyone who decided to utilize a little common sense.  He has created the same hype about his predictions that Nostradamus used to create his own following.  In fact, it almost seems as though he has stolen the mystic’s model verbatim.  He has even shared his process for making predictions, which has been described by some as creating “generalist nonsense.”

Being successful in business is about understanding new developments as accurately as possible.  In determining your own strategy, the best tip I can give you is to understand these trends yourself.  You know your company and its environment better than anyone else.

Kalen Smith is the founder of Engineer-a-Business, a provider of business-to-business services and informational products for developing technology businesses. Read more about Kalen here.

Kalen Smith