{"id":22780,"date":"2024-05-12T14:48:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-12T19:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/a-tale-of-two-forecasts-using-sales-forecasting-software-to-bridge-the-gap\/"},"modified":"2024-07-08T11:05:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-08T16:05:51","slug":"a-tale-of-two-forecasts-using-sales-forecasting-software-to-bridge-the-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.planview.com\/a-tale-of-two-forecasts-using-sales-forecasting-software-to-bridge-the-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Forecasts: Using Sales Forecasting Software to Bridge the Gap"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A common problem in both portfolio management and sales and operational planning (S&OP) is reconciling product revenue forecasts between a company\u2019s regional sales analysts and its corporate decision-makers. Typically, regional sales analysts focus on short-term objectives, and their forecasts must align with targets or commitments set by regional heads. By contrast, corporate staff tend to be strategically oriented, using long-term forecasts that extend beyond region- or country-specific details.\u00a0 Forecasting is an iterative process, and without a common platform, it\u2019s easy to lose track of the latest inputs as corporate and regional teams try to reconcile differences and harmonize assumptions. This often leads to a chaotic scramble in order to get reports and figures ready for the portfolio review.
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Yours, Mine, and Ours<\/h4>\n
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Recently, we customized an instance <\/span>for a <\/span><\/span>customer<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u2019s corporate analyst team. Their model included a range of products and indications in their top 15 markets. While this full-featured system <\/span>contai<\/span>ned<\/span> a ran<\/span>ge of sophisticated market and competitive analytics necessary for modeling a long-term product forecast, the <\/span><\/span>customer<\/span><\/span><\/span> quick<\/span>ly realized that without a complementary system for analysts in each country, they could not easily compare and reconcile their top-down and bottom-up forecasts. Sharing their system with the regional analysts was not a practical solution since the analytics in the corporate system would be overkill for the regional teams, requiring extensive training and oversight. The practical solution was to add a separate model for the key regions\u2019 short-term product forecasts that was linked to the corporate model. This would meld the advanced analytics of the corporate model with a traditional S&OP approach for regional data gathering<\/span> and allow for direct comparison of forecasts at both levels.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Using Planview Advisor, the customer transitioned away from an opaque, manual, repetitive process to a streamlined forecasting process that focused analysts and management on the critical forecast details.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Planning for Change<\/h4>\n

The regional system addition was developed and introduced over the course of four months. Our customer took special care to ensure successful adoption by all stakeholders:<\/p>\n