Always keeping an eye on achieving sales targets

There are many perspectives and rhythms that affect corporate planning. The standard Salesforce tool “Planning and Forecasting” can provide very good support for many requirements.

But what if the standard procedure and mapping do not meet the needs of your company? Let’s take a look at this using the example of a management dashboard that is used to report various company key figures based on opportunities. Ideally, such a dashboard should be used in regular team meetings or employee discussions.

One requirement for the control dashboard, for example, is that all reports for target figures and actual values should be filtered by market region using dashboard filters. Unfortunately, the standard “Planning and forecasting” solution reaches its limits here, as different fields would have to be filtered for the target figures (by user) and for the actual figures (by opportunity region).

For a filterable dashboard, this would mean that all reports in it would have to be structured according to the same report type, which unfortunately excludes the use of the database from the standard “Planning and forecasting” function.

But there is another way to build a control dashboard with planning figures that can also be filtered by an additional value on the opportunity:

By using plan opportunities, the required plan figures are created in the system and are therefore on the same level as the sales opportunities in order to transparently display the degree of fulfillment. Adjustments during the year are also guaranteed, as the values of the plan opportunities can be changed.
Data record types and field history tracking are used to ensure that adjustments are historically traceable and can only be made by a defined group of users.
In addition to the plan figures, the degree of achievement of other KPIs can also be tracked on such a control dashboard (based on opportunities) in order to ensure comprehensive control.

How does b2plus go about implementing this for you and bringing transparency to sales management?

• Which key figures are you already using for management purposes and which are still missing? Which target groups can be served?

• What information is available in the database and what information is required to display the planned key figures?

• Once the key figures have been defined, the corresponding plan values are created in the system.

• The control dashboard should be the central control element for sales activities in order to regularly evaluate the opportunity pipeline and plan achievement.

This gives you a sales management dashboard with the filter functions that are important to you, such as for selected regions or customer groups.