Contributed by Mike Gilliland, Product Marketing Manager

Having a job in business forecasting is sort of like being in county lockup – only without the benefit of cuddly bunkmates and weekly delousing. Most of those in the job want out, and those who remain in the field possess psychological maladies that only Doctors Freud or Phil, or the Marquis de Sade, can fully understand and appreciate. How I held forecasting jobs for 15 years (and still survive to write about it) is truly a marvel, which I attribute to an ability to focus only on the good times – like fitting models for the Wonderbra (while Director of Forecasting at Sara Lee Intimate Apparel), and being laid off with a generous severance package (also from Sara Lee Intimate Apparel).

The Business Forecasting Deal is a combination memoir and survival guide for the practitioners of this foresaken career path. It is intended not so much to help forecasters become the best forecasters they can be, as to help them avoid becoming the worst forecasters they can be. While I’m not blessed with exceedingly high moral values, I have always felt a strong sense of disgust and moral outrage with waste of any sort. It just seemed unethical to me, and highly irresponsible by management, to allow resources to be spent on business processes that are ineffective. Forecasting is often a prime example of process waste – where common organizational policies and practices fail to make the forecast any better and often just make it worse. It was important to bring some sanity (and critical self-reflection) to this field, exposing the worst practices and snake-oil sales tactics of its vendors, and that is what I’ve tried to do in the book.

The writing process actually began in early 2004, during a mid-career “test retirement” I enjoyed for too few months prior to joining SAS. Then in mid-2009, at the encouragement of my then boss, Anne Milley, I felt ready to resurrect the project and signed the agreement with Wiley and SAS Publishing.

A book’s title is the first and most important decision in any such endeavor, and led a series of struggles over “artistic integrity” which my SAS editor Stacey Hamilton had to negotiate with the publisher and with SAS legal. Since I was hoping to generate a lot of sales (and thereby fund my real retirement), and I knew that diet books are always big sellers, I proposed the title Eat Like Mike: How to Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days. Unfortunately, this idea was rejected uniformly. That left only The Business Forecasting Deal, which at least tied back to my blog of the same name (and only the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles objected to “THE BFD” as my new title (see September 11, 2009 blog posting)).

With a goal of having the book available by June 7, 2010 (to release at our F2010 Business Forecasting Conference), Stacey laid out a strict writing schedule to keep me on plan. This permitted about 4 months for a first draft, 4 months for editing and final revisions, and 2 months for Wiley’s production. To the extent possible, I leveraged previous articles and white papers, and about 100 pages of Q&A compiled from webinars, online discussion groups, the internal SAS forecasting discussion list, and personal correspondence. Charlie Chase, Anne Milley, Tammi Kay George, Joe Mazel (of Mazel Associates), Debbie Blackburn (of BB&T), and my father, provided feedback on the emerging draft. (My dad also pre-ordered 5 copies, briefly bumping me up to #70,000 on the amazon.com best seller list, and is now shopping around his own new manuscript, Worst Practices in Child Rearing.) Meredith John, product manager for SAS forecasting, was the first to review the full manuscript front to back (it had been written significantly out of order), and provided many valuable suggestions for focusing and arranging the message.

The finished product has major chapters on fundamental issues, worst practices (in both mechanics and forecasting process), and forecast value added (FVA) analysis. The FVA approach – identifying waste by always comparing your efforts to “doing nothing” – is a reccurent theme throughout the book. There are also chapters on forecasting without history, alternative approaches, implementing a solution, practical first steps, and a final summation expressed as “the aphorisms” of business forecasting. Forecasting FAQ’s make up a 50+ page appendix.

Marketing the book – including signing 120 copies at F2010 last week – has been a lot more fun than writing it. For this I thank Tammi Kay, Kristine Vick, Buffie Silva, Stacey Hamilton, Shelly Goodin, Julie Platt, Anne Milley, Sara Smith, and Faye Merrideth for their efforts on my behalf. I’ve honestly never had anyone (other than INTERPOL) so enthusiastic about getting my face in the print and online media.

Stacey Hamilton deserves much credit for smoothing the way with Wiley and allowing us to utilize a more whimsical approach to the book cover. The cover illustration plays off the book’s underlying theme of forecasting as a circus, with snake handlers, side-show barkers, and a magic black box for cranking out forecasts – all to remind the reader of the unsavory topic at hand. It is intended to reflect the practices of many vendors in the field – selling “magic” potions that don’t really work, and to temper the often unrealistic expectations of forecasting customers. I wanted the readers to know, immediately, that the book was going to offer an alternative view of forecasting. The illustration was created by graphic designer Jessica Crews, who has also done a few pieces I’m using on The BFD blog.

Overall, I think we ended up with something to celebrate, and I’m looking forward to continuing the book’s promotion on The Notorious BFD World Tour.