Does Sales forecasting software improve sales forecasting?
Does Sales Forecasting improve Sales & Profits?
Most people seem to think so but some don’t. Even specialist's involved in the Supply Chain Industry such Sales & Operations Planners, Demand Managers disagree. In a recent LinkedIn discussion MXI started online under the title “What’s the biggest myth in sales forecasting “demand managers and sales and operations planners everywhere discuss the topic in depth and there are some interesting comments.
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Clearly there are areas in FMCG sector ideally suited as the data has excellent granularity owing to the long sales histories and predictable seasonal patterns. Data in depth going back a long time taking account of holiday week-ends, Easter etc. 330 ml cans of coke, 500 ml bottles of tomato ketchup forecast very easily and nicely in MXI’s Forecast Pro software. Export the last 3 years of sales histories to Excel or a database, connect it to Forecast Pro and start forecasting using the expert statistical forecasting selector, exponential smoothing, box Jenkins or whatever.
Excel is waste of time for Planning Whitepaper
Forecasting is an Art and a Science
Interestingly in speaking with these companies with high volume, fast moving, Fast Moving Consumer Goods FMCG, Pharmaceutical or Food Companies, you hear directly from these firms that their average overall accuracy is around 80% for the whole company. This is much lower than people would expect. That’s a lot of dividend, profit left on the table. At some of our clients a percentage improvement in forecasting accuracy can mean millions of extra profit. Every dime counts.
Forecast Pro 30 Day TrialIn these area it’s not the sales forecasting that really matters but the fact that the volume of data itself is a problem that integrating SAP, ORACLE with Excel is a huge problem. Even in 2011 some of the best known brands, banks and corporations in world are still using the most basic PC tools to compete. You can’t fight Tanks with cavalry which is the same as high end planning with Excel. FACT.
See Forecast PRO in action here.