It was hard not to be enthusiastic when speaking with Dr Uwe Schulte, former VP of global supply management at Unilever, and Jason Busch, editor of Spend Matters, on the topic of scenario planning. The pair both had strong views on how procurement can use it in adopting long-term strategies.

With risk management high up the agenda, now is a good time to think about what it can offer.

While putting together an article, which you can find here, it became clear that the problem in convincing anyone of its worth is that it hardly has any quantifiable returns and, perhaps unfairly, has the air of a ‘blue-sky thinking’ session.

Last September, a Big Debate on this blog sparked a stream of opinions for and against the practice. To some it was “critical” and “a great tool”. Others weren’t so sure it had any real applicable value in a business context.

It seems every time scenario planning scores a goal, as in the case of Shell in the 1980s, it’s ruled out – in this instance because there are several suggestions that the process itself had no actual impact on the strong decisions the company made at that time. 

Still, Schulte’s comment that “scenario planning should be considered as a tool which enables procurement to step out of the day-to-day and prepare for big changes,” hit home its value.

Equally, Busch was at pains to highlight how the preconception that it's simply a look at what might happen in the future is wide of the mark. It's also a way of learning more about procurement's place in the business and in the market.

That the practice offers these kinds of insights should permit it reconsideration by some. If you think it’s simply about imagining how much money you’d lose if a war broke out or a plague hit, it’s probably worth thinking again.