Understanding scenario planning.
Scenario planning is essential to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment. This guide breaks down how scenario planning works, tools that support it, and how it helps organizations across industries thrive.
Scenario planning in an uncertain business world.
Every business faces uncertainty—markets shift, competitors emerge, and disruptions happen without warning. Scenario planning helps organizations tackle these unknowns by preparing for multiple possible futures, not just the one they hope for or expect. It’s a way to think ahead, stress-test strategies, and keep your business ready to act, no matter what happens.
Unlike static plans that assume one predictable path forward, scenario planning considers a range of possibilities and empowers leaders to embrace disruption—something the most successful businesses do regularly, according to the Harvard Business Review (HBR).
HBR’s research shows that three-quarters of growth and profit leaders drive disruption in their industries vs. less-forward-thinking counterparts that consistently fall in the middle of the pack.
“Top performers are unafraid of big change,” HBR experts wrote. “In the next year, 63% will change their business model significantly, and they are nine times more likely to see a total business model change this year. They view business model change much more positively.”
Scenario planning is the key to unlocking this level of foresight and strategic confidence, aligning teams around shared goals and navigating uncertainty with poise and purpose.
Key takeaways.
Scenario planning helps businesses prepare for uncertainty by exploring multiple possible futures.
The scenario planning process involves identifying key variables, developing scenarios, and creating adaptable strategies.
Scenario planning improves decision-making, risk management, and organizational flexibility.
Scenario planning has common challenges including time demands, data accuracy, and execution complexity.
Technology simplifies scenario planning with tools for modeling, analysis, and collaboration.
“Top performers are unafraid of big change. In the next year, 63% will change their business model significantly.”
—Harvard Business Review
What is scenario planning?
Scenario planning is a process businesses use to identify key future uncertainties, evaluate how potential scenarios could impact the business, and create flexible plans that can adapt to different outcomes. Factors typically analyzed during scenario planning include:
Market conditions: economic shifts, competitive pressures, and industry trends
Operational risks: supply chain vulnerabilities, resource constraints, or disruptions
Regulatory changes: new laws, compliance requirements, or government policies
Technology developments: emerging innovations that could disrupt or enhance business
Customer behavior: shifts in demand, preferences, or purchasing patterns
By evaluating these factors proactively, business decision-makers can identify risks and opportunities and prepare their business accordingly. They no longer need to rely on guesswork or cross their fingers that a single outcome comes true. Instead, they can build resilient strategies that succeed under a variety of conditions thanks to foresight and flexible strategic planning.
How does scenario planning work?
Successful scenario planning requires a structured, thorough approach. Teams need to ensure all the relevant information is in one place and that they have the right tools for modeling and decision-making. Here are the important steps to follow during a scenario planning exercise:
1. Identify key variables.
The first step in scenario planning is to identify factors most likely to impact your organization’s future. These variables should include external forces such as economic shifts, regulatory changes, or evolving customer preferences, as well as internal dynamics such as resource availability, operational capacity, or workforce size.
Start the scenario planning project by gathering input from key stakeholders across departments. Diverse perspectives are essential for not missing variables outside any single area of expertise. Once you’ve compiled a list, prioritize factors based on two criteria:
- Potential impact: which variables could most significantly affect your goals and operations?
- Likelihood: how probable is it that each variable will change in a way that influences your business?
By prioritizing the variables most relevant to your organization, you can ensure that your plans address the challenges and opportunities that matter most.
2. Develop scenarios.
Next, develop multiple scenarios using your prioritized variables to imagine a range of future possibilities. Each scenario should tell a distinct story about what the future might look like and provide a framework for analyzing its implications. Here’s how to structure the scenario development process:
1. Frame the scenarios: identify the scope of each scenario. Focus on what could happen over a specific time frame—such as the next quarter, year, or market cycle.
2. Define the scenarios: create 3 to 5 detailed scenarios to cover a range of outcomes:
- Best case: an optimal future where conditions improve significantly.
- Worst case: a challenging future where risks materialize.
- Most likely case: a scenario based on trends and reasonable assumptions.
Make them measurable by assigning specific conditions and numbers to each scenario. Develop a narrative for each scenario explaining its key drivers, expected impacts, and critical challenges. The goal is to create scenarios that are both realistic and useful for decision-making.
3. Analyze potential impacts.
With these scenarios in hand, the next step is to assess how each one could affect your organization’s goals, operations, and strategies. This requires taking a deep-dive into the potential risks and opportunities each scenario presents.
Start by asking these key questions:
- What specific risks does this scenario raise?
- How would our financial goals, operational capacity, or workforce be impacted?
- What opportunities could we leverage in this scenario?
Quantify the impacts wherever possible. Calculate the financial effects of each scenario, estimate changes in resource demands, and determine how metrics such as profit margins, productivity, or customer satisfaction could shift. This analysis provides the foundation for creating actionable strategies.
4. Formulate strategies.
Once the impacts of each scenario are understood, it’s time to develop strategies tailored to each one. Focus on these three areas:
Address risks: identify specific actions to mitigate potential challenges. For example: In a worst-case scenario that involves supply chain delays, you might diversify suppliers or increase inventory reserves.
Capitalize on opportunities: plan how to take advantage of favorable conditions. In a best-case scenario, this could involve scaling production to meet rising demand or entering new markets.
Create flexibility: build contingency plans that allow for quick adjustments. For example, a hiring strategy might include phased recruitment that can be paused or accelerated depending on the scenario.
Each strategy should include clear steps, assigned responsibilities, and measurable goals. This guarantees that your team knows what to do and how success will be tracked, regardless of which scenario materializes.
5. Review and refine.
Scenario planning is an ongoing process. As new information becomes available, revisit your scenarios to ensure they remain relevant and useful. This could involve updating variables, revising assumptions, or adding new scenarios to reflect emerging trends.
Regular reviews should be built into your planning cycles to ensure your strategies stay aligned with current realities. For example, a quarterly review might reveal that a previously low-priority variable, such as a competitor’s new product launch, has become a critical factor.
Developing long-term strategic options requires you to remain adaptive across each new company lifecycle. By continuously refining your scenarios and strategies, your organization will stay prepared and responsive, no matter how conditions evolve.
“At any point in time, we now see exactly where the numbers are landing and examine different future scenarios.”
—Wes Cordingley, COO, Beyond Blue
How scenario planning software can help.
Rapid technology advancement has transformed scenario planning from a manual, time-intensive process into one that is dynamic and data-driven. With modern scenario planning tools, organizations can quickly model scenarios, analyze intricate data relationships, and pivot as new information emerges.
Here are the key features that make scenario planning software essential to the process:
Data integration.
Cloud-based planning tools can bring together data from multiple sources and sites across an organization—financial systems, supply chain tracking tools, customer management platforms, and more—into a single centralized location. This makes data visible and accessible to planning teams and ensures scenarios are based on complete, accurate insights.
AI-powered predictive analytics.
Scenario planning software comes with predictive analytics capabilities powered by AI. These capabilities can analyze historical data and trends at scale, identifying patterns not possible to spot with human analysis alone. With these tools in place, organizations can perform more sophisticated data analyses and see how changing variables impact scenarios in real time.
Real-time collaboration.
Cloud-based tools facilitate collaboration by allowing teams across departments and geographies to contribute to the scenario planning process. Real-time updates ensure everyone is working with the most current data, reducing miscommunication and improving alignment throughout the process.
Visualization and reporting.
Scenario planning software comes with dashboards and visualizations to make complex data easier to interpret and digest—even for team members who aren’t data experts. These features allow leaders to quickly compare scenarios, assess impacts, and present findings to stakeholders in a clear, compelling way.
Dynamic updates.
Unlike static plans, technology-driven scenario planning tools allow for continuous updates. As new data becomes available, organizations can quickly revise scenarios and strategies, ensuring their plans remain relevant and actionable.
Scenario planning across industries.
Scenario planning equips organizations in every industry to prepare for the future. These real-world examples from Workday customers demonstrate the versatile ways businesses use scenario planning to succeed.
Public Trust: enhancing financial decision-making.
Public Trust, a financial services provider in New Zealand, needed to strengthen decision-making during times of uncertainty. Bogged down by outdated manual processes, it required a better, faster approach to financial planning.
“Our processes were manual and subject to key person risk. Financial planning processes were long and labour-intensive,” said Public Trust’s Head of Finance Dan Devcich. “We had limited scenario planning capabilities, which was something our stakeholders were increasingly seeking. We lost finance personnel due to the demanding nature of the roles.”
Public Trust was in search of a cloud-based solution to modernize its processes and enable more comprehensive, sophisticated scenario planning. With Workday Adaptive Planning enterprise performance management software, Public Trust cut its budget cycle time by 20 days, eliminated risks present in the old processes, and was able to generate what-if scenarios to stay more adaptive to market changes.
Denny’s: maintaining operational agility.
American diner chain Denny’s was operating with an outdated finance system that required manual work and lots of spreadsheets. End-users were alarmingly unengaged with the process. Denny’s decided to adopt Workday Adaptive Planning to modernize the process.
Implementing an enterprise performance management tool has transformed its ability to plan for the future. Denny’s has more than doubled its number of yearly forecasts, reduced annual budget cycle time by 25%, generated 60% more what-if scenarios, and reduced scenario modeling time from weeks to days—or even less.
“In just hours,” shared Denny’s financial planning and analysis manager, “we can model scenarios to understand what the organization will look like 12 months from now. It’s valuable.”
Beyond Blue: expanding mental health support.
Beyond Blue, a leading Australian mental healthcare provider, needed to become more scalable amidst increasing mental health stressors in the communities it served. More specifically, it needed to be able to model scenarios that could inform optimal resource allocation.
Workday Adaptive Planning helped Beyond Blue improve visibility into business value drivers, accelerate month-end reporting, and build greater trust with stakeholders—all while making quicker, smarter decisions.
“At any point in time, we now see exactly where the numbers are landing and examine different future scenarios,” said Beyond Blue COO Wes Cordingley. “We can see where we need to make adjustments in response to likely changes in mental health support needs.”
“In just hours we can model scenarios to understand what the organization will look like 12 months from now. It’s valuable.”
—Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, Denny’s
Putting scenario planning into action.
The full value of scenario planning lies in its ability to turn uncertainty into opportunity. It equips leaders to make smart decisions that keep their business resilient, even when faced with unexpected challenges. By incorporating scenario planning into regular operations, businesses can stay prepared and adaptable to any new situation that comes their way.