Tioxide: Computerization—The key to the future in financial planning

As the capability of new computer systems becomes increasingly sophisticated, so does the application of computer techniques to financial and strategic planning become more relevant to management. Planning and practically all forms of decision-making are concerned with the future, which necessarily is uncertain and therefore difficult to plan for. Forecasting methods, however, can suggest trends and it is possible to reduce the number of possible futures to a manageable number, in effect, creating scenarios. But the viewing of multiple scenarios in a manual accounting system is impractical, given the sheer volume of work, and this is where the facilities offered by computerization can assist decision-making greatly. The case study illustrated here concerns a multinational company with production facilities in seven different countries, using a sophisticated financial software packege for strategic and financial planning applications. The article traces the development of Tioxide's association with a financial modelling package, Planmaster, from initial use on a time-sharing basis to the changes in hardware manufacture which made it possible to run what is essentially a mainframe program on the desk-top microcomputer of the planning department.