Tag Archives: introduction

Working Toward a Better Forecast

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

“…all markets clear, i.e. all supply is eventually absorbed at some price — but maybe not a premium price.”

Deni Pombriant from Beagle Research brings up a great issue. Right now, for most companies, sales forecasting is a thankless job that yields poor results. As he has said to me before, “If your sales forecast accuracy isn’t better than 50%, you’re better off flipping a coin.”

Unfortunately, for manufacturing companies especially, that level of inaccurate forecasting is simply not working. It results in an unacceptably high percentage of their supply being sold at less than optimum price, below cost, or worse yet, written off completely.

On the other hand, when companies use purpose-built sales forecasting applications, rather than Excel, they can significantly reduce both risk and uncertainty. Here at Right90, I’ve seen some of our customers achieve sales forecast accuracy of 95%. We also just did a webinar with Jim Dickie of CSO Insights that highlights the cost of not forecasting correctly—direct impact on number of sales people who make quota.

Thanks again, Denis, for raising awareness on sales forecasting as an effective way for companies to make their numbers—both revenue and margin.

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Sales Forecasting brought us together

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Since I first started to work for a living, I have been involved with forecasting one way shape or form. Whether it be financial, operational or sales… From all aspects of the process, whether it be a modeler, an end-user, a consumer, a reviewer or a subject matter expert for a software vendor. Thirteen years ago, I decided to move into sales and help companies around the world of all sizes in a variety of industries address their forecasting process that is so crucial to both their short and long term success. Since that time companies have really jumped on the bandwagon making Enterprise Performance Management one of today’s biggest software application categories.

A challenge we face

There are two things that have perplexed me over the last few years. The first is how much money companies have spent in addressing the financial forecasting side of the business (in essence this is mostly limited to an expense, capital and employee budget) whilst they are still using spreadsheet or a concoction of tools to address the revenue/sales forecasting side of the house. The second is the fact that none of the ERP, BI, EPM, CRM vendors have yet come up with a satisfactory solution of their customers who have spent millions of dollars standardizing on their applications to later find out that sales forecasting is not addressed satisfactorily.

Having spent the last 13 years working with hundreds of organizations around the world, I decided to join a company that is committed and focused on the revenue side of the equation to drive real value to an organization. Right90 has been developing on-demand software application to help companies deliver a trusted, actionable sales forecast that will help companies drive to better results. Right90 has demonstrated a deep understanding of the problem and is developing the necessary applications to enable companies to drive to better results.

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Who I am and why I started Right90

Monday, May 18th, 2009

My name is Kim Orumchian. Right90 is the 6th startup I have worked at and the second one I have started. The previous company I co-founded was called Fatbrain. Fatbrain was a b2b version of Amazon.com, selling books and training materials to corporations. Fatbrain grew from my house in Palo Alto, to become a $100M company with over 400 employees. We took Fatbrain public in 1998 and sold it to BarnesandNoble.com almost exactly two years later.  By that point we were the third largest online book retailer behind Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

At Fatbrain, I ran Engineering and Operations and was responsible for buying and implementing SAP R/3 to be the system of record. Although Fatbrain was technically an ecommerce retailer, we thought of ourselves more of a manufacturer – assembling orders of books from a supply chain of more than 50,000 book publishers.

There were 3 observations based on my experience at Fatbrain that led me to start Right90.

  1. Companies that have a complex product mix can get huge business value from predicting the mix correctly well in advance: better margins, higher customer satisfaction, predictable earnings, and lower inventory obsolescence.
  2. Sales people and product managers that are on the front lines and closest to customers usually have good instincts about what is going to sell and should be listened to yet management and other parts of the company usually ignore their perspectives. There should be an easy way to capture what they think and present it to management without taking a lot of time or effort.
  3. SAP and systems like it are not good at capturing and scrubbing sales forecasts but could benefit a lot from having better demand forecasts to drive operational planning, executive reporting and budgeting.

We created Right90 as a SaaS (software as service) company because we saw that sales forecasting would need to reach across company boundaries to involve supply chain partners, customers, channel partners, and distributors and that an on-premise solution would not be able to do this easily or effectively.

We chose the name Right90 to mean “have the Right 90 days” as in “have the Right quarter.”

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Welcome aboard!

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

You’re looking for a trusted, actionable sales forecast. You’re looking for a way to collect better data from your sales reps. You’re looking for a way to vet that data. You’re looking to act on the data you collect. You want to be a leader in your organization. Well, stop and click this link.

Right90 is delivering a new way of doing business, a way to get the rest of your company aligned around your sales forecast so they can deliver better product pricing, availability and features; a radically innovative way of sales forecasting vs. what you’re currently doing — that leverages your current investments, yet introduces new tools to get the job done better. If that’s what you’re looking for, then read on.

What we’re doing

Every company has a story tell. And Right90 is no different. So we’re here to tell you a story. Well, actually many stories, which you can see on the left ←. But the Right90 Insights blog is here to help you learn about what we believe is a completely new way to forecast your sales (The US Patent and Trademark Office agrees with us as we now have two approved patents for our technology).

Why you care

But you want to know why you should take the time out of your day of to read what we have to say. Our executive team and screaming-happy customers (side note: according to Google, I am the first to use that phrase. Consider it coined :) ) have an amazing amount of knowledge and most have been where you are, worrying about your forecast and worrying about what’s happening in this volatile world. The Right90 Insights blog is a place where the Right90 team members will share their opinions and insights on sales forecasting, sales management, revenue performance management, sales operations, IT and industry issues.

Who I am

I am the Corporate Communications Manager. I am the narrator that helps share our story out in the public. I am a journalist by education and I love telling a good story and I promise that this is a page turner.

So, welcome, comment, email, laugh and learn.

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