Right90 Blog

Is the time that you spend assembling the sales forecast a good use of your time? Companies that use Microsoft Excel to manage their sales forecast often refer to the process as “Excel Hell.”

That’s an understatement for many.

In our earlier discussion, we focused on adoption and how to make the system easy for sales reps. For many companies, Excel is the tool of choice to satisfy the adoption requirement. Sales reps are familiar with it, it’s easy to use and it can be tailored to exactly what a company needs it to be. But what happens if you are on the receiving end of those spreadsheets?

If you only have a handful of sales reps, the process might be manageable today. But your aspirations probably include having a much larger sales organization and one that continues to grow. How long do you have before your Excel process fails you? One of our customers used to spend four weeks assembling the forecast in Excel and by the time they were done, the forecast was already out of date! What a great use of time!

The value of a sales forecasting solution goes far beyond the collection of the forecast. That is just the beginning. A complete sales forecasting solution provides real-time insight into what is changing in your business and why. Whether it is at a summary or detailed level, your sales forecasting solution should give you the information that you need so that you can take action with razor-sharp precision.

Does your sales forecasting system provide you with the information that you need, or are you still cutting and pasting spreadsheets?