Sales forecasts matter, but why do they have such a significant impact on organisational success? Understanding the role of sales forecasting, and optimising your forecasting approach, is linked to multiple areas of performance. Here’s why.
1) Making Plans
Strategic planning is central to keeping organisational momentum on track. Strategies such as diversification and expansion need to be planned well in advance, while production and planning need to evolve in tandem. Crucially, successful strategies tend to require multiple critical elements to fall into place at the right time, and cash flow is the magic that makes this happen. Understanding sales patterns can therefore offer a significant competitive advantage.
Our Corporate Planner uses advanced analytics to make light work of data. It alerts financial planners to patterns, correlations, and trends, enabling strategists to move forward with confidence.
2) Act Now
Problems can bubble away undetected for months and years before they suddenly become a very visible drama. Often, unusual figures are not noticed until the quarterly report, by which time a domino-effect of cash flow problems may already be in motion. As such, relying upon retrospective data analysis strategies leaves organisations vulnerable. Additionally, the approach reduces agility, which can limit a company’s ability to respond to unexpected forces.
Today’s corporate planning software offers up to date data monitoring and analysis. If a potential issue begins to emerge, organisations can take immediate action to diagnose and solve the problem.
3) Set Realistic Goals
Sales forecasts can show where the company should be heading, but only if they are accurate. Employees thrive on motivation, and this drives productivity. However, when goals are set at random, the result can be disappointment. There is no faster way to demoralise an organisation than repeated failures, and if this happens often enough the outcome is that progress may grind to a fatal halt.
With the right sales forecasting software in place, the sales team have vivid, real-time insight into performance, including any areas where things may be going wrong. This enables managers to set realistic, achievable, and relevant goals that keep motivation strong.
4) Reduce Risk
Every business is fraught with operational risks. Some of these are predictable, but the majority of them are subtle. Some organisations limp along for years, never realising that there are quiet patterns that are holding them back from growth. This information is usually bundled up inside reams of historic data, invisible to even the most skilled analysts. Equally, competitor performance can be as much of a mystery, leaving many companies in the dark about how to maximise their wins and minimise failures.
Accurate sales forecasting considers vast quantities of data, revealing information and trends that can help organisations to allocate resources more effectively. By offering unprecedented levels of insight, digital sales forecasting takes back control.
Find Out More
Corporate Planner can reduce much of the uncertainty related to forecasting, which may help companies thrive in even the most challenging times. For more information about Corporate Planner and how we can help you get the most out of the application, please call 01242 578966 today.
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