Discuss the strategic importance of forecasting at your organization (or in one with which you are familiar). Provide two examples of ways that forecasting could improve organizational processes or strategic decisions. Support your rationale with evidence from the readings or external research

Forecasting is a style of decision making process, used by organization to help in planning, budgeting, and estimating future growth and expenses of the organization. In other way, forecasting is a process of predicting a future outcome, using past and present outcomes.

I work at AXA Insurance company, were business forecasting is a key to the companies business. Forecasting is very important to my company because we use it to ascertain risk in insuring a property, and give insurance rate to the value of the property to be insured.

For example, in our fire and burglary insurance to a property,(fire and Burglary is an insurance against fire damage or theift to a property). Through forecasting we can be able to determine the risk involved in insuring a particular property against fire or burglary, because forecasting will tell us, how many of those properties that has been insured has come for a claim, through that we can determine the risk of insuring such property and the rate that will be applied to the value of that property when purchasing a premium(the money paid to an insurance company to insure your property or assure your life). With this forecasting it will be easier for the company to determine which property to insure and which rate should be applied to the value of such property, this will help the company to be strategic in choosing a preferably business and how the business should be done.

Another example is choosing an insurance policy that will be available in some geographical areas ( insurance policy are those insurance packages that binds an agreement between the insurance company and the insured person or property). Through forecasting the company has been able to evaluate all the insurance policy and decide where some policy will not apply. For instance we don't insure day-to-day commercial buses in Nigeria because of bad road networks, and poor maintenance of traffic lights, so accidental damage records with commercial buses are high, which has increased the rate claims are been paid, but for some countries like U.S where the road networks are well designed and traffic lights are maintained, we insure day-to-day commercial buses, because accidental damage records with those buses are low. So forecasting has help us to evaluate the claims that will be paid if we continue insuring those commercial buses in Nigeria, and how it will affect our business.

Forecasting is a key in planning business strategy, because it helps to tell you the Odds in doing a particular business. According to research, people who are good in forecasting, win more money from betting games, because it gives them the possibilities of predicting the outcome of an event.

as university of miami psychologists debra lieberman and adam smith pointed out in a recent article in the journal current directions in psychological science, humans have social and psychological mechanisms to deter incest. with very few exceptions, marriages between brothers and sisters and between parents and their children are verboten in every human culture. the primary psychological anti-incest mechanism is the yuck response. even the idea of sex with their mom or dad, bro or sis is upsetting to most people. the psychologist jonathan haidt has found that nearly everyone is repelled by the prospect of brother-sister sex, even in hypothetical situations in which there is no chance of pregnancy).

the biological cost of incest

this raises an interesting question: just what’s so bad about incest? sure, having sex with your dad or your sister seems gross — but why? some anthropologists have argued that incest taboos are learned social conventions. this explanation, however, doesn’t make sense to me as it does not explain the widespread existence of anti-incest mechanisms in creatures ranging from cockroaches to chimpanzees. second, the incest taboo is about as close to a universal law as human moral rules get.

why should mechanisms to avoid incest be so widespread both in nature and across human societies? the answer is simple. the problem with having sex close with relatives is that there is an astonishingly high chance that your offspring will be born with a serious birth defect.