Challenge / Goal
Telular, a high-tech communications device manufacturer, needed a better way to create and manage their sales forecasts. Sales pipeline data was gathered in Excel spreadsheets, which clouded forecasts and resulted in a cumbersome and inaccurate process. The inefficient forecasting process made inventory management more difficult, and the impact was felt across the entire organization.
Solution
Bridgenext (formerly Wave6) tailored Telular’s Salesforce® Sales Cloud implementation to streamline the forecasting and reporting process:
- A new custom forecast report automatically pulls opportunity data from across Salesforce®
- Managers can easily compare forecasts side by side
- Sales reps are notified of forecasts and are able to update and modify forecasts in real time
- Final forecast reports can be exported into spreadsheets and shared with the operations team for product management and inventory planning
We are thrilled with our new Salesforce forecasting application…sales managers no longer have to gather pipeline data manually, and the operations team has much better visibility to the opportunities behind the forecast, which leads to better inventory planning decisions.
Results
The new Salesforce forecasting application has led to a number of business benefits:
- Automatic gathering and presentation of relevant sales pipeline data
- Reduced forecast cycle time and increased accuracy
- No need to gather pipeline data manually
- Better visibility into opportunities for better inventory planning
- Improved communication between managers and reps
- Timely, accurate forecast data for sales and operations teams
