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Spotlight of the Week: Applying Advanced Filters on Your Data

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Update forecast screen to show data on single pageOne of the more popular features in the Right90 Next Generation Forecaster is the ability to use advanced filtering beyond just searching and browsing your hierarchies. How can filtering help you? By getting you only the data you want to see on your forecast view. As an example, many forecasters and managers want a view of the forecast for a specific time horizon and to filter out any opportunities that have no revenue impact for that time frame.

To take advantage of advanced filtering, first update the forecast screen so that you have all your rows of data on one page. (Page size options are dynamically determined in Right90 and can be selected under the “Update” screen.)

If you find you still have too much data to fit on one page, you can reduce the amount of data you’re viewing three ways:

  1. Narrow your search — by selecting a particular person’s forecast or a certain geography
  2. Reduce the length of time that you’re viewing — from 2 years of forecast to 6 months, or less
  3. Remove the quantity, price or revenue columns – if they are not needed.

Apply a data filter to your forecastOnce you have all the data on one page as you like it, select the “Filter” option in your menu across the top. Fill out the pop up screen (including the details under “More Options”) and hit “Apply” in the bottom right corner.

After applying your advanced filters, you can even take it one step further – group your data to view an even more manageable set of data on your screen.

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Spotlight of the Week: A Simple Way to Evaluate the Quality of Your Forecast

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Measuring forecast accuracy is one of the most popular ways to measure the quality of your forecast.  However, we’d like to suggest some other simple but very valuable analyses you can do to help build confidence in your forecast data.  At a minimum, knowing when the forecast was last updated will give you an indication as to how good the data is.  We’re not talking about the date the forecast was “due” to be updated by the sales team but rather the last time a particular opportunity changed. This is one way our customers determine how complete their forecast is.

On the Right90 Forecast screen, there are two key “viewable” fields that help you understand if your forecast is complete:

  • “Last forecasted date” field tells you when the quantity or price for that particular line item was last forecasted
  • “Last updated field” tells you when anything else associated with that line item was updated (i.e. the stage of the opportunity, market application, or other custom fields you have set up).

Before analyzing “last forecasted data” results, we have two more tips for streamlining your view and maximizing the functionality available in the Next Generation Forecaster. First, when you have your forecast data on one page in Right90, filter out zero revenue rows to reduce the amount of unnecessary data. Try filtering revenue greater than zero for just the current month. Then, sort by clicking on the “last forecasted date” column header to bring the older items to the top so that you can focus on items that may not be up to date.

Obtain a quality sales forecast using filtersIn the example to the right, you can clearly see that quantity and price forecast updates were made in January 2010.

As both a forecaster and a manager, reviewing when the forecast was last changed helps you quickly spot areas that may need a second look.  Catching outdated information along the way will help build confidence in your forecast data and improve your forecast accuracy.  Have you used these techniques to evaluate the quality of your forecast, or do you have another favorite technique to share?

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Spotlight of the Week: Managing to the Exceptions

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Many forecast processes and systems lack the ability to view data at a high level and then drill down and diagnose specific problem areas in a way that lets you manage exceptions by customers, products or regions of your business.

The Right90 Analysis screen does just that through the use of a “breakdown panel”. To access the “breakdown panel”, just click on any numeric value on your main Right90 Analysis screen.

How can this help you save time? If a particular customer, product or region looks out of line, then just click on the number to get more detailed insight. You can continue to drill down to the lowest level of detail associated with the data available to the Right90 application.

Managing Exceptions in a Sales Forecast

Use Right90 to manage exceptions in your sales forecast.

Let’s look at the example to the right where we’re comparing the current forecast to actuals or shipments in Right90 for the year. You can quickly see that the shipments are 18% less than the forecast for the Americas region.

If you click on the total Americas revenue number listed in the table, the breakdown panel appears letting you know which areas within that region, product families and types of customers are responsible for the difference.

If you drill down yet another level on the customer type, then you can identify which specific accounts have contributed to the shortfall.

So, looking at higher level data and only drilling down to the detail when you need the specifics allows you to save time and focus on just the exceptions!

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Spotlight of the Week: Including Your Targets

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Sales teams always like to see “the score.”

In other words, how I am doing against my objectives or targets. This is why many of our Right90 customers load “target” data in Right90, so they can more easily keep track of their forecast compared to objectives for the year. Targets can be loaded at whatever level of detail is available and whatever makes the most sense for your organization.

For example, you can load the data by person, by product or by region. However, if your targets are only available by product, Right90 is flexible enough to allow you to omit the rest of the information and load only the targets by product.

Once you load your targets, you can compare them to your forecast based on the lowest common denominator between the two sets of data. Comparisons between the forecast and targets can be viewed in the following three helpful ways:

  • On the Right90 forecast screen as a reference point when you’re entering your forecast

    • Entering Data in Your Sales Forecast

    An interactive user interface allows you to capture data to address your targets.

  • Within the Right90 Change Analytics™ screen to get a graphical view of how the forecast is changing over time against the targets

    • View Sales Forecast Changes Over Time

    Right90 Changes Analytics displays a stock chart inspired view of your forecast changes.

  • Finally, on the Right90 Analyze tab for a high level snapshot comparisons where you can readily view details like the percent difference between the two data sets.

    • Detailed Drill Down in Sales Forecast Targets

    Compare your data sets for a detailed view of your sales forecast.

Including targets in Right90 is simple and it adds valuable insight for all your Right90 forecasters!

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Spotlight of the Week: Sales Forecast Best Practices

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Study these sales forecasting tips

Study these sales forecasting tips

Frequently we’re asked “What is the sequence of steps to achieve success with Right90?” The answer lies primarily in refining how you capture, vet, analyze and use the forecast to drive your business. What kind of returns are our “best in class” customers experiencing from refining their overall process and creating a more trusted, actionable forecast?

We’ve seen examples of inventory reductions of more than 20% and margin improvements of more than 500 basis points. Here are some of the common practices for our best in class customers in each of those key areas.

(more…)

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