Technology

ForeTell® provides a powerful "what-if" methodology
for making decisions
Our methodology extends a technique called scenario planning.
Scenario planning helps organizations think systematically about how
their industry, society, or geo-political landscape is likely to evolve
over years or even decades. Scenarios depict vivid stories about
plausible futures, which provide baselines for thinking about strategic
decisions.

Scenarios paint possible futures rather broadly, because of the
uncertainties arising from extended time frames. Generally, they don't
directly answer the first question decision-makers ask, which is "What
will WE and our stakeholders look like in this picture?" Scenarios are
also passive: they don't help you assess HOW YOUR proposed plans,
investments, or strategies will perform, which drives the answer to the
second key question "What can we do to position ourselves for success
in this future?" This is particularly unfortunate because of the famous
"Law of Unintended Consequences" - human beings are not very adept
at thinking through complex changes over time. While chess is a challenging
game, chess moves are much simpler to anticipate than behaviors in
competitive markets, military conflicts, or entire societies.


Our innovative ForeTell® software embodies and powers our decision support methodology.
ForeTell addresses these problems by extending scenario planning with supporting software. The ForeTell software provides advanced modeling, "what-if" simulation, and analysis capabilities closely tied to the scenario planning perspective. Specifically, ForeTell enables you to do the following:

  • Populate your scenarios with key actors of interest to you - namely, YOUR organization, employees, partners, competitors (or adversaries), regulators, etc.
  • Define alternate interventions to prepare your organization for the future
  • Specify your knowledge of situational dynamics in manageable pieces - namely, key environmental forces and stakeholder behaviors likely to influence possible futures
  • Project the collective effects of these dynamics on your situation - in a consistent, repeatable manner
  • Apply familiar data summary and analysis tools to explore projected outcomes and compare outcomes across alternate scenarios

By allowing you to "personalize" scenarios to incorporate yourself and your stakeholders, ForeTell makes scenario planning organization-specific. By allowing you to insert proposed decisions and to project and analyze their likely outcomes, ForeTell renders scenario planning actionable. Thus, ForeTell provides true decision support rather than a passive prelude to actual decision-making.


ForeTell® provides a knowledge management framework.
Our ForeTell platform is not tied to particular critical decisions, government or commercial domains. Instead, DecisionPath works with clients and recognized experts to acquire best practices decision-making expertise for particular problems. We codify this knowledge and combine it with our pragmatic "what-if" methodology, rapidly constructing, validating and deploying ForeTell solutions tailored to your specific decision support needs.
Decision Path also offers consulting and training services to develop and support ForeTell solutions.