So you’ve done a whole lot of hard work to get your sales forecasts together, and then COVID-19 strikes (or some equivalent ‘Black Swan’ event), which changes the status quo instantly, turning everything on it’s head…including your sales forecasts!
In this video from our Writeback Extension Use Case Series, Scott Duthie, Principal Consultant at Pomerol Partners, shows us how we can use Qlik and the Writeback Extension together with underlying SalesForce data to do some real-time scenario modelling, so your team can collaborate remotely, commenting or adding key modelling assumptions or insights directly into the data model, and where everyone can see the new updated forecasts instantly.
In Scott’s example, ABC Building Contractors find that current events have thrown out their revenue forecasts, and the CEO need revised projections to enable him to motivate his revised quarterly strategic plans to his Board.
By setting up a Qlik Sense application, connected to the company’s existing SalesForce data using a REST connector, we can extract all of our opportunity data into our Qlik app and can model the impact of our disrupted pipeline on our sale projections. We can then use the Writeback Extension to get our sales team to update and rework our sales forecasts by updating the following key aspects of closing a sale:
- potential revenue
- the Cost of Sale
- the date the opportunity is due to close; and
- the weighted probability that the opportunity will close.
Using the Writeback, we can have different sales agents commenting on the assumptions they’ve made, so the Sales Manager can get an objective view of the relevance of the updates made, and how these impact our model. Most importantly, everyone gets a real time view, and we can see the resultant impact of each opportunity on our overall sales forecast.