'Plan' starts by presenting all collected 'trends' in similar format to the 'Scan' system. 'Trends' is loosely defined as our continuous trawl of all Insights to understand the impacts of 'what's potentially going on out there?' Our current 3600+ trends are a shorthand check list of upcoming significant change, discoveries, society-changing events, new perspectives, policy changes, trends, transformative drivers, potential uncertainties, and wildcards that can help you to ensure you plan from a wider and longer-term perspective.

Every week our professional trends analysts trawl our Insights for new Trends ranking each and presenting them with an associated signal strength graph. We also qualify our trends by industry and give a short assessment of the high-level implications. Users can then add their rankings too creating an aggregated 'Members' analysis'.

Users can see the detail behind the ranking of signal strengths and be able to score these themselves. Their output is compared, where appropriate, to the 'Members' analysis'.

Colour-coded, numerical scores appear next to each selection. This quick traffic lighting system allows users to quickly see whether the trends colours are signaling looming danger, a clear track ahead or a mixture of risks and opportunities.

Data can be displayed in single representations or mash-ups as a table, chart, pie, bar, graph, tile, network, portal, map, Venn, dial, pivot etc.

Users can select trends from Members' analysis for further consideration or add their own (My analysis). They can also reference an Insight to a Trend and a Trend to one of their own Insights, thus creating their own mind map. They can add their own comments and tags, print pages and add their own Trends making these available on our public site, to share only with their associates or to retain for their private use.

Content collections as shown on the example 'Plan' page above allow a user to see trends in rank order and by changing their scores to conduct sensitivity analysis or adjust for changing market conditions and their perceptions.

Our ready-made existing trend base of 3,600+ trends saves users considerable time in finding and maintaining their key trends database. It is far quicker to begin with this comprehensive listing than to begin from scratch. A concerted effort by users can generally reduce the trends to the vital few in just a couple of days with the certainty of knowing that all bases have been covered. Manual methods of starting from scratch often take months, soon get out of date unless constantly repeated and incur significant cost.

A client's system administrator also has the ability to select trends as primary 'Trend Alerts' or secondary 'More Alerts'. Those that are selected as 'Trend Alerts' will immediately appear on the right-hand side of all the systems pages so that users are always aware of 'what's important around here?'

Every user has the ability to maintain their own trends database but cannot change the right-hand side 'Trend Alerts' selected by the system administrator.

The system then allows users to access a 'document editor' to create a report, a document, a brief, a postcard, a collage, or an analysis that properly answers their key question(s) about a specific trend and helps them 'Act'on their chosen response. The document editor can be used by single users, or facilitated groups as a logical framework to do strategic thinking, create a plan and to act upon it. The editor is particularly ideal for workshops.

The document editor offers a series of pre-populated templates covering:

• Future briefing (detailed assessment of external potential)
• Breakout thinking (fresh glasses to find new solutions beyond current paradigms)
• Scenario planning (possible alternative futures)
• Market analysis (likely competitor responses)
• Supplier analysis (probable supplier rections)
• Stakeholder mindset (likely stakeholder desires)
• Organisational critique (detailed assessment of internal potential)
• Plausible responses (possible alternative responses)
• Agreed strategy (determination of agreed high-level response)
• Strategy development (detailed description of strategic plan)
• Action plan (allocation of responsibilities and timeframes)
  
  Each is populated with suggested best practice questions to answer in pursuit of determining strategic responses to a trend.

Users then have the ability to choose whether to share this document with colleagues or not. If the system administrator chooses to share a document and has selected a trend as a Trend Alert then the document will be available from the right-hand side of all the system's pages behind the trend's title. Users can therefore read the latest company thinking on this trend.

So, in summary, if a new major Insight, perhaps in the form of a surprise, came in today, it could theoretically be added to the system immediately, its impact quickly assessed and the Trend Alert updated in real-time with the new information. This ability to create a dynamic strategic thinking system means everyone who has access to your system should be on the latest page of your strategy all the time, be able to see and contribute latest intelligence and know the progress in dealing with the opportunity or threat.

Users can also contribute their own thoughts where they disagree or report new opportunities and risks and signs of possible change.

Users can 'change settings' for each trend to open or hide and print these templates as necessary. They can also ignore the templates and use the document as a blank canvas to add their own work in their own style and format. This means that your high-level strategy can be disaggregated to teams and individuals charged with specific responsibilities and for them to create their own sub-set strategies and action plans.

'Change settings' also allows the selection of best practice quantitative assessments for each template above. Once selected, new fields open up in the 'Plan' service allowing users and groups to refine their rankings. The 'Plan' - My Analysis page above shows a quantitative assessment to carry out an internal capability assessment. Only the external assessment cannot be selected and always appears by default.

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