There are many events in our lives which we never encounter enough times for us to become expert at handling them: getting married or divorced, moving home, organizing a trip round the world, coping with the death of partner, coping with a life threatening illness or accident, etc.

Scenario Planning identifies (as best as it can) 'best practices' or at least, 'things you should think about', 'pitfalls to watch out for', 'the main steps of the process'. For example, if you are getting married, the planning service will help you remember and consider all the things you need to organize such as venue, ceremony details, invites, catering, travel and transport, honeymoon, wedding attire, wedding presents, etc. etc. At this level, it is a pretty generic advice service.

At the next level it begins to drill down into the detail: what sorts of venues do you want and where, how much do they cost, are they available on the date in question, what are the necessary travel arrangements? Etc. This next level of detail therefore includes a wide range of information from and about suppliers, p2p reviews, etc.

The third level involves the provision of specific tools and services to help individuals actually implement their resulting decisions: book the venue, arrange the catering, send out the invitations etc. Scenario Planning services are therefore likely to use many other person-centric services (such as Requests for Proposal and Problem Solving Communities) as modules of a broader, more integrated service that focuses on a specific problem.

 Business case,  for individual

• reassurance, 'support' and stress busting
• access to expert and p2p advice
• access to "real people" and experience from a data repository of user-generated input, not ad/marketing propaganda designed to create a need or sell a product or service
• avoiding silly mistakes, achieving better outcomes in less time

Business case, for companies

Scenario planning services effectively create highly efficient marketplaces for areas of focused, specialist consumer needs where vendors can acquire customers at low cost and build reputations for expertise

Necessary Infrastructure

In addition to other modules such as Requests for Proposal, Scenario Planning services require the development of easy-to-use but highly sophisticated, secure specialist software which helps individuals plan and implement decisions.