VantagePoint understood the process and
challenges in our S&OP planning process. Sales
Managers and Demand Planners now agree on a consensus plan on a monthly basis.
Sales forecasting is an integral part of business management and an important component of the overall planning cycle (S&OP). It is predicting the future using historical performance and industry trends blended with an analysis of expected market conditions.
VantagePoint has extensive experience in sales forecasting (and demand planning), and will work with your business team to define a superior forecasting application, providing management the insight necessary to make critical operational decisions.
Operational functions impacted by a reliable sales forecast
- Capacity and/or resource planning
- Inventory and raw material management
- Cost efficiencies
- Competitive pricing
- Market penetration
- Cash flow
- Customer retention
- Operational plan
- Demand plan
SAP BPC facilitates the full planning process in a single environment which includes the strategic plan, annual plan, operating plan and sales forecast. BPC can automatically feed key drivers from the sales forecast to other plans, such as the demand plan or operational plan, instilling user confidence in providing a “single version of the truth”.
Features of a sales forecasting application
- Detailed sales plan
- By SKU or Product group
- By Customer
- Driver based trend factors
- Historical
- Promotional
- Industry
- Market
- Economic
- “What-If” scenario’s
- Versioning
- Actual and forecast integration
