Forecasting can be a really tough exercice. You need to figure out what is going to happen on the demand side as well as the supply side. The supply side can be hard, but the demand side is 10 times harder.
The forecasts in the business plan should address the following topics:
- Supply:
- What can technology do?
- How much it will cost (CAPEX)?
- What will be operations costs be (OPEX)?
- Demand side:
- How big is the market? The addressable market?
- How many users, buyers, customers will there be?
- What will be our market share?
- How much revenue will we generate?
One way to simplify forecasting is to break the analysis in three phases, as shown in the following exhibit.