Comparing forecast and achieved, month after month

Every year a sales plan gets built, often in a spreadsheet. Reps give their numbers, regional directors adjust them, general management signs off, and the file goes into a folder. It comes out again near the end of the year, when someone wants to know how far the company fell short, and by then there is nothing left to do about it.

A sales director has the same problem at a smaller scale. He knows one region is behind, roughly. He cannot say which products, since when, or whether the shortfall is in what was ordered or in what has reached the client. Finding out means another spreadsheet.

Why a forecast gets abandoned

Mostly because comparing it to reality is too much work. The plan sits in one file and the sales in several others, the products are not named the same way, and the comparison has to be rebuilt by hand each month. People stop doing it. A plan nobody checks has no effect on how anyone sells, and reps soon learn that.

Building the plan where the sales already happen

In DeepComm, the forecast lives in the same app as the orders. The rep enters volumes for the year, product by product and month by month, each with its unit of measure, and the annual total computes itself. The forecast then starts as a draft, editable by its author or by a manager.

Approval makes it a reference. General management, regional management or sales administration approves it, and the app records the approver’s name and the date automatically. Once it is approved, the rep can no longer change it, and a past year is locked, so the history stays fixed.

Each person sees what concerns them. A rep manages his own forecasts. A regional director sees those of his reps. General management and sales administration see them all, and can filter by director, then by rep.

Deciding what counts as “achieved”

This is the question most spreadsheets leave vague, and it changes the result. An order taken in September and paid in December has achieved something, but what and when depends on the definition.

General management chooses one criterion, and it applies to the whole report:

• Confirmed order: any validated order, even if not yet delivered or paid. This is the default.
• Delivered order: only what has been delivered, with validated delivery notes.
• Paid order: only orders fully settled.
• Paid and delivered: orders both delivered and settled, which is the most cautious reading.

A sales director might prefer the first, since it measures his team’s selling. A finance director will often want the last. The app holds one definition at a time, so the whole company is reading the same report, on the same terms.

Reading the gap while it can still be closed

The report sets forecast against achieved month by month and product by product, in quantity and amount, with the gap and the percentage achieved. On the dashboard, the monthly comparison also sets achieved against last year, for a rep, a region or the whole company.

Those views change the timing of the conversation. A shortfall on one product in one region can show up while there is still time to act on it, by sending the reps to the right clients, or by adjusting what the company buys. Since DeepComm also carries purchasing, from the supplier order to the receipt and the supplier invoice, the person reading the gap on the forecast is one screen away from the stock it affects.