With the proliferation of  ERP, BI, BPM, Data Analytics and other business systems, the key selling point is the concept of having a dashboard such that everything you need to drive your business is in front of you.  Just read the "gauges" and step on the brake or accelerator…    It's a miracle of modern management, a simple,  "powerful" ,  prioritizing, management by exception system that does what we need to have done.  Or is it?

Let's consider a few key points.

The objective of a planning process, in marketing or elsewhere, is typically to pick the most worthwhile goals and figure out how to get there in the most efficient way possible.  Usually,  the most significant barrier to effective  planning for many is  oversimplification and basing decisions on assumptions and "feel-good" information that has no or little relation to reality. This leads to really bad decisions and I believe is a primary reason that statistically, most  businesses and plans fail.