Forecasting demand for Guide Dogs 15 years into the future

Room 4 | 10:45 am - 11:15 am | Wednesday, May 8, 2024

The global pandemic put the Guide Dogs charity into a firefighting mode, forcing a short-term mind-set, but there was a need to reset the strategic horizon to build more long-term vision for the business. Aligned to this has been the rapid advancement in consumer and medical technology which had the potential to completely disrupt the traditional operating model, meaning it was more critical than ever for the Guide Dogs to explore how the charity may have to adapt to the changing demands in the future.

The challenge is how do you predict the future, and overlay a range of varying disruptive challenges, in a robust, data-centric way?

In this session we will walk through the challenges the Guide Dogs charity faced and how we collaborated with SKIM, taking a traditionally oriented charity who are singularly focused on critical logistical elements – such as breeding and welfare of Guide Dogs – to bring a range of future scenarios to the front of mind, forcing leaders out of their comfort zone to address the challenges that the 21st century will throw at such an important part of the U.K. services to the visually impaired population.

Key takeaways:

1. How deep qualitative understanding of the emotional benefits of a service being provided are equally as important in demand forecasting as robust data modelling.
2. How easy-to-adopt principles of scenario planning can stretch the thinking of all levels of the business to embrace a more adaptive strategic mind-set.
3. How the combination of these factors enabled the business to change the way Guide Dogs understood the service they provided, delivering a new lens with which to view the benefits a Guide Dog provides.

Case Study Joint Presentation Non-Profit