Corporate Planning Models

Nearly two thousand firms in the United States, Canada, and Mexico are either using, developing, or experimenting with some form of corporate planning model. Computer based planning models represent an attempt to describe the complex inter-relationships among a corporation's financial, marketing, and production activities in terms of a system of mathematical and logical relationships which have been programmed into a computer.In 1969, there were less than one hundred firms which were actually using corporate planning models. Two questions emerge when we consider the aforementioned data. Why has the number of corporations employing computer based planning models increased so dramatically? Why corporate planning models?