To see the Right90 forecast in Salesforce CRM, just go to your regular “Reports” tab and choose to view the “Right90 Demand Forecast Reports” Folder. There will be some default views in that folder (including a standard “Weighted Revenue Forecast”) that you can use as a starting point for creating customized reports and dashboards that meet your needs.

In addition to your sales forecast data, keep in mind that we can also write back other “plans” or sets of data that you maintain in Right90 as long as it’s at the same level of detail as your original sales forecast. So for example, if you have a marketing forecast that’s at the same detail as your sales forecast, you can use Salesforce CRM to report on it as well. In fact, we’ll even help you get started—just send a request to the Right90 Support team. We want to make sure you’re taking advantage of all the features your integrated solution has to offer!

For example, the chart to the right shows that the 2010 forecast for Apple has increased by $26M in the last 6 months — with most of that contribution coming in Services forecast as detailed in the Change Summary to the right of the graph.

The other two lines on the chart represent the forecast for two of your other key accounts — Sony and Verizon Wireless. Changing the “Focused On” from Apple to either of these other two allows you to quickly toggle between each customer to understand what’s driving the forecast changes.

Since we’re capturing forecast changes by customer, product, and region, you have a lot of flexibility in determining the type of comparisons you want to see on the graph and also which views of the Change Summary detail on the right will be most meaningful. Get started today by going to Right90 Change Analytics, select “Create New View” in the top right corner of the screen, and start learning more about how your forecast is changing.

1. Use your snapshots to compare your forecast at points in time — for example, how has the 2010 forecast changed from the beginning of the year to today?  In this example, we’re looking at the variance by region.
2. Compare your forecast to targets or goals so that you can keep track of how you’re doing against your objectives. In this example, we can see how each sales person is delivering against their targets.
3. Compare your forecast to actuals or shipments to monitor attainment during the quarter. In this example, we can see attainment by customer.

Whenever you get a view of the data that you’ll want to see on a regular basis, save time by creating a Favorite. If you don’t have targets or actuals in Right90, your Right90 Administrator can help facilitate getting that data so you can take full advantage of Right90 Comparative Analytics to help identify and manage exceptions in your business.

All of these examples and many other requirements can be met with the Right90 “Copy/Paste Rows Special” functionality available on the Forecast screen. While a separate, more basic Copy/Paste row option enables you to quickly copy an entire row of data from one line item to another, “Copy/Paste Rows Special” gives you more advanced capabilities to copy and paste data selectively as well as for multiple lines of data. With this feature, you can:

• Copy data from specific lines from one time range to another
• Copy data from specific lines to different lines within a selected time range
• Copy data from specific lines from one plan to another plan that’s at the same level of detail.

Here’s a simple example to help you get acquainted with this time saving feature. Let’s copy several months of forecast for 3 products to the same months for 3 different products.

Step 1: Right click on any row in your forecast and choose “Copy Row(s) Special”.

Step 2: Complete the RightCaster information, pick affected rows, and hit the Copy button to copy.

Step 3: Right click on any row in your forecast and choose “Paste Row(s) Special”.

Step 4: Complete the RightCaster information, pick affected rows, and hit the Apply button.

In this example, the results below show that you’ve copied revenue forecast data for the first 3 rows to the last 3 rows on the screen.

Hit “Save” and you can see with just a few clicks that you’ve successfully replicated data from one place to another. Try using Copy/Paste Rows Special to save time updating your forecast!

This option simultaneously copies current changes to other plans — which can save you valuable time and keystrokes.  A list of plans will appear in the pop-up menu that are at the same level of detail as your initial entry plan and are ones where you have authority to edit.  Simply save the changes to multiple sets of data all at once.

Depending on your company’s forecasting process, there could be many situations when it’s helpful to consolidate your updates across plans.  And don’t forget — you can include comments in Right90 with all your changes to provide additional context for others.

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.

Once 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.

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.

In 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?

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.

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!

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


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


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.


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!

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.

• Capturing the forecast
• Vetting the forecast
• Analyzing the forecast
• Driving the business

Capturing the forecast

CAPTURE sales forecast data and make it easy to get everyone’s perspective with applications built for sales reps.

• Ensure agreement on the level of forecast detail required for success in your specific organization. Follow the 80/20 rule to allow forecasters to focus on the key customers, products and metrics that will translate to the bottom line without drowning in detail.
• Use a continuous sales forecasting approach instead of once a month or once a quarter. This can be driven by management through execution of a closed-loop process where the numbers are reviewed and discussed consistently.
• Roll out a forecast process that incorporates both new business opportunities and review of ongoing or existing business.
• Integrate shipments and backlog into Right90 so that the sales team has an opportunity to improve the accuracy of the forecast with valuable, historical reference information.
• Create and display your annual operating plan or targets in Right90 to help keep the focus on achievement towards specific objectives.
• Motivate sales through incentives such as rewarding accuracy and timeliness in forecast updates.
• Maximize forecasting efficiency by focusing on the specific features available inside Right90 that will benefit the team most when updating the forecast—for example, using Favorites, Smart Forecasting, offline forecasting or bulk change options.

Vetting the forecast

VET the forecasted data. Evaluate, scrub and judge the raw forecast data from your sales teams and adjust for bias, accuracy and historical performance to create a trusted forecast.

• Use Right90 Forecast Analysis™ to review top variances and drill down to details for easier management by exception.
• Consistently monitor and apply judgment to the sales forecast comparing it to historical data, shipments, backlog, and target plans.
• Utilize other perspectives, such as a marketing forecast plan, as a comparison to the sales forecast during the scrubbing process.
• Use Right90 as the key communication vehicle in forecast review meetings to streamline conversations and make more efficient use of time. This includes using forecast comments in Right90.

Analyzing the forecast

ANALYZE with stock chart-like analytics to understand the specific actions that can be taken to move the needle and make an impact on the quarter’s results.

• Access Right90 Change Analytics™ to monitor changes to the forecast each week and quickly pinpoint actions that can impact outcomes.
• Deliver timely operations updates on significant forecast changes—either through a standardized process or through direct access to Right90.
• Increase collaboration internally across sales, marketing and operations and externally with distributors and customers to help them get the right products from the organization at the right time.

Driving the business

DRIVE your business by using your trusted sales forecast to predict outcomes and drive actions across the business from marketing to ops to finance.

• Add cost data to Right90 for visibility into forward-looking margins by customer and product to more easily understand sales forecast impact on margin.
• Develop a closed-loop process so that the stakeholders can see how they are doing and have a scorecard to facilitate continuous improvement.
• Provide finance with long-term forecasts for strategic planning.
• Identify key thought leaders within each stakeholder group in the forecast process to develop guidance for others and drive accountability.

Through commitment to the practices outlined above, you can take big steps toward achieving significant results, just like some of our successful customers.