Submitted by intp89 on
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I am trying to develop an MT goal related to a model we are tasked to build that will predict our market share in the upcoming year. T is easy. I know when it needs to be ready. I think an obvious measure would be, predict next year's market share within +/- X%. I can work with my team and boss about what the X should be.
But here is the rub. Our prediction will rely on future business implementations by our company, which is often hard to quantify. Real life example here. Say we forecast the market share, the company plans around that, and then a decision is made to greatly reduce the marketing budget. The fact that we "do marketing" is a variable in the model, but it is a little more art than science. How would I handle at end of year? Should I say "Go back and run the model and make an adjustment to reflect our reduced focus on marketing. Then calculate how accurate we would have been"? Since the way the "impact of marketing" is incorporated into our model in the first place relies on judgement calls (every marketing variable cannot be quantified or the model would have so many inputs as to make it useless), it will be hard not to be biased on that adjustment.
Am I overthinking this? After re-reading my post, I'm guessing that I am? Maybe I can just address it when doing the annual review of my analyst charged with this as his primary responsiblity, and hope my boss will do the same when he evaluates me?
Can you build in flexibility
I'm a bit confused if you are tasked with building a model or tasked with hitting a number. So if this doesn't hit the mark let me know. My assumption is that it is a little bit of both.
Publicly traded companies that are subject to all sort of marky dynamics give quarterly updates on their performance to Wall Street, is there flexiblity within your company to allow you to do the same? Sounds like you are nervous about missing the number, which might be not aligned to the overall goal you are being asked to deliver on which is a model.
A suggestion if this was my goal would read "predict next year's market share within +/- X%, through usage of a model based on quanitative and qualitative means, which will be flexible to make quarterly updates should business dynamics warrent."
I would recommend that if this is your first year you pick a significant "X" as the first year is always tough when piloting something.
I think you have a great opportunity to provide the company value. Everyone knows that all forecasts are wrong, but if you can figure out the inputs for your firm and its market on how to increase market share that sounds like an extermely powerful tool.
Good feedback thanks! I'm
Good feedback thanks! I'm probably going to use your suggestion. For some more context, We've been doing this process for 2-3 years now and people are pretty comfortable with the idea that all forecasts are wrong. We've done a decent job keeping the business abreast of changes that would impact our projections, whether we redo the projection or not. We even go back and explain where we were wrong and discuss openly why that may be, so it is a pretty non-toxic environment, and I'm not so worried about the numbers being off.
Based on my experiences with HR in this company in the past, I'm mainly just worried that HR will take it too literally and start giving me trouble when I ask for a raise for the primary person working on this. "Were they within X%?" I can hear the question now........ But some of what you wrote will help me pre-empt that. Thanks!