The Challenge of Sales Forecasting and Collaboration

Demand planners need information at the customer level in order to build a consumer-driven demand plan. Often, sales teams in the field are the only means of collecting that visibility and insight into the consumer level. However, collecting their feedback often poses considerable difficulties. Often the feedback returns in multiple disparate spreadsheets, at different times and using different units of measure, making the forecast nearly impossible to reconcile. Furthermore, it is difficult to get a forecast from sales without taking their focus away from where it belongs – the sales process.

The Benefit of a Consolidated Sales Forecasting Process

Supply chain performance is dramatically improved when demand planners have the ability to systematically collaborate with sales, finance, marketing and operations -- as well as suppliers and customers -- to create a more accurate forecast. This feedback can provide visibility into areas that demand planners wouldn’t otherwise be able to see, allowing enterprises to plan more effectively for demand, improve customer service, and optimize inventory levels.

The Planning Portal Software

John Galt’s Planning Portal provides an online framework for gathering collaborative input for sales forecasting and other vital information between corporate planners, other departments and locations, and even the customers directly. The Planning Portal presents information from each module in the Atlas Planning Suite to any stakeholder within the enterprise and beyond. By combining input from sales it is easy to develop a synchronized sales forecast and operational plan that puts each constituency on the same page. The Planning Portal also empowers sales staff to add their input about new product introductions and promotions, leading to a more unified vision.

The Planning Portal provides a significant competitive advantage by enabling users to:

• Provide a web-based collaborative framework to capture real-time sales forecasting and operational planning information
• Demand planners utilizing the Demand Management Engine will receive the sales forecasting information in real time
• Display vital supply chain information simply using graphs and charts that don’t overwhelm salespeople.
• It takes only 1-3 hours to train sales
• Implementation is typically 1-4 days
• Empower sales people to share the sales forecast and distribution requirements plan with customers at their site to increase customer service and strengthen customer relationships.
• Allow your team to interact with the forecast or overall demand plan, and manage inventory from remote sites via the Internet.
• Build a “one number” collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR) process with suppliers, customers, and business stakeholders through the power of sharing information via the Internet.

With the Planning Portal our customers surpass their competitors by creating a more efficient consumer-driven supply chain. Contact us today to see a demo and learn more.