Sales Planning and Forecasting 

Purpose

You use this business process to combine different methods of planning in sales – from planning company’s strategic sales targets to operational planning performed by the individual sales employees. For example, by territory or by opportunity.

A sales manager (responsible for several territories) sets sales or contribution targets for the sales employees in the field. Since the sales manager and the sales employees use a common planning platform, the planning tasks performed by the sales manager are closely reconciled with the business planning and operational planning tasks performed by the sales employees. You can specify as many dimensions for entering planning figures (such as sales region, product group) as you need for your planning requirements. The different planners can access different levels of the same data. For example, the sales manager can plan at the product group and sales organization level while the sales employees plan at the product and sales office level.

Sales representatives can enter planned sales figures directly in the opportunity. This enables them to carry out detailed sales revenue planning (sales revenue split) for the coming weeks, months, quarters or, if necessary, years. They can enter planned sales figures (for example, sales revenue, market share, quantities) for the opportunity in total, or planned sales figures for individual products (for example, sales revenue, quantity).

The dimensions and key figures named in the process flow below are only intended as examples. For these, SAP delivers Business Content within an example scenario in SAP Business Information Warehouse (SAP BW). You can use your own Business Content in SAP BW to specify alternative dimensions and key figures for your planning.

Prerequisites

You have access to sales figures and sales plans in SAP BW.

Process Flow

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       1.      Analyze sales with plan/actual comparisons and rolling forecasts

Sales managers use queries to perform a situation analysis to gain an overview of the current and previous sales situation. This overview can help you forecast future sales and plan the next targets.

       2.      Create a new sales plan for next sales period

Sales managers create a new sales plan for the next sales period, using the information gained above. You can enter data by a range of different dimensions, such as a business unit or product category.

       3.      Create sub-plans for different territory levels

Within the main plan, sales managers can also create sub-plans for different territory within the territory hierarchy.

       4.      Plan target quantities, revenues, discounts and costs

Sales managers plan key figures such as quantity, revenue, costs, and contribution margin for the selected business unit and product category. You can distribute the planned target values for quantity and revenue top-down to lower levels of the territory hierarchy automatically. This top-down distribution is performed on the basis of past distribution history or other distribution rules, such as evenly across all product categories. The data as well as the planning structures are saved in the transactional planning InfoCube.

       5.      Sales team reviews and returns adjustments to manager

The sales targets are then sent to the sales employees who review them and apply them to their own sales plans. The planning figures entered by the sales employees and key account managers can then be automatically rolled bottom-up to the higher planning levels. You check whether the sales employees’ plan data falls within the targets set. Any necessary adjustments to the plan data are made in a new planning cycle (top-down and bottom-up).

Once the plans have been finally reconciled and you have approved the field plan figures, the results are saved in the transactional planning InfoCube.

       6.      Distribute targets to sales team

You release the plan data and it is distributed top-down as target values for the sales team. Furthermore, each employee receives their own sales target values. 

       7.      Sales representatives plan by opportunity

Sales representatives can enter planned sales figures directly in the opportunity. This makes it possible for them to carry out target-oriented opportunity planning. In opportunity processing, sales representative can enter the prospect’s required products, assign quantities and revenue planning data.

       8.      Sales team works on opportunities and sales deals

As revenue comes in, this sales data is posted as actual revenue and can be stored in the Plan/Actual InfoCube, enabling managers to run analyses comparing the targets with the incoming revenue. The actual revenue data is extracted from the operational systems, such as SAP CRM.

       9.      Review sales targets

Sales manager and employees use the following analyses to monitor the development of opportunities and incoming revenue, comparing it against the planning target values. They use the following analysis to help them:

¡        Year-to-date/Year-to-go analysis (YTD/YTG analysis): This helps you to compare incoming revenue with the targets as the sales period progresses.

¡        Plan/actual comparison: Enables you to compare plan and actual data at specific points in time.

¡        Goal achievement: Enables sales managers to monitor the proportion of their targets that have been met with revenue.

The information enables managers to review and adjust either individual deals, their forecast figures or even sales targets if necessary.

For more information about sales planning, see the SAP Library under Documentation ® mySAP Business Suite ® SAP Customer Relationship Mgmt. ® mySAP Customer Relationship Management ® Analytics ® CRM BI Content ® Sales ® Sales Analyses for CRM.