A recent study by Accenture reveals that the majority of revenue is brought in by a relatively small percentage of salespeople, and in many cases over half of sales reps are not making quota. This has led to significant employee churn in many organizations, which has had a significant impact on both

revenue and the costs incurred in continually ramping new sales employees to full quota. Many CSOs admit their sales processes have not improved over the last five years, and many agree there is a significant need to innovate and drive performance improvement within sales operations.

Sales performance gaps are top of mind for CSOs, and much of this has to do with the uneven distribution of quota attainment among account executives within the firm.

Modern Sales Operations Planning Delivers Better Results

A study from CSO Insights lists out the top sales objectives among CSOs, and the key point to take away is that many of these items, if not all, are closely tied to a company’s ability to manage sales quota and coverage. Capturing new accounts, increasing sales effectiveness and penetration into accounts, optimizing deal size, and improving team selling are all directly related to how well a company can manage coverage and sales capacity within its territories.

Sales planning spans the entire organization, and tends to get complex when you are dealing with a global organization that manages multiple products and channels. Teams are spread out and processes tend to differ by business unit, making collaboration very difficult.

Given the heavy reliance on spreadsheets to manage sales planning and forecasting by many organizations, it is no surprise we often hear

classic challenges around manual processes, scalability limitations, and version control.

In fact, research done by Ventana states that using software not designed for sales forecasting can have adverse consequences. Sales operations teams also get put under immense pressure when having to deliver information to sales management when they do not have the right tools to do so.

81%of companies identify sales-forecast inaccuracy as the primary cause of poor financial performance.1

1. Source: Accenture, 20142. Source: Ventana Research Investing In Better Sales Forecasting, 2010

Research reveals:

Close to half (47 percent) of the participants reported that reliance on spreadsheets has made it more difficult to manage activities such as forecasting.2

Companies that use only Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems still find themselves pulling data to spreadsheets for analysis and modeling territory and quotas, and modeling sales forecasts.

It becomes challenging when trying to model changes in sales forecast over time, and then analyze their impact against key sales metrics.

How do you do robust quota planning to analyze the impact of changing quotas on performance? For example, if quotas were higher in a region, how would it affect the region’s commission-to-revenue ratio?

What happens if you realign territories? How do you optimize territory and sales -rep alignment to meet forecasts? Do territories need to be split? Combined? How would this impact revenue/expenses/commissions?

And finally incentive compensation—analyzing commission structures. There are usually different types of commission plans, and payouts differ based on quota attainment. How can these be optimized?

Benefits of a Formal Sales Forecasting Process

Making Quota Forecasting Wins Forecasting Losses

According to a study by Ventana Research:

People who implement a formal measurable process around sales forecasting have seen their ability to make quota go up, their win rate increase, and the loss rate decreased.

52%57%

38%

47%

52%

35% 31% 26%

64%

Non-Standard Process

Informal Process

Formal Process

Sales Planning and Optimization

Sales Forecasting

Commission & Incentive

Management

Advanced Analytics

Quota & Territory Management

SFA EPM

• Sales Reps/Overlays

• Customers

• Territories

• Products/Channels

• Current Sales Forecast

• Sales Stage

• Target Setting

• Revenue Forecast

• Expense Plan

Sales Forecasting

Being able to adapt to change and remodel the business at the pace of change is key for achieving the sales numbers. With Oracle Planning Cloud for Sales Performance, you can see evolving forecast trends and act immediately. With the analytic capabilities, forecast versus actuals trending is seamless. This is all delivered with built-in process management to enforce best practices. The ability to integrate with SFA systems for faster forecasting cycles ensures you can proactively mitigate forecast risks and be more likely to achieve desired outcomes.

Oracle Planning Cloud for Sales Performance integrates with your current SFA system to provide a strategic and seamless sales platform.

Quota and Territory Management

In a market where only the top 20 percent of salespeople bring in over 60 percent of a company’s revenue, it is key to align your quota and territories to make sure you have a very efficient sales force. With Oracle Planning Cloud for Sales Performance, you can easily align resources to optimize performance to ensure you have very efficient and high-preforming salespeople. This is done by incorporating historical sales, customer data and qualitative input to get a true reflection of what has happened, and allow you to create a realistic plan going forward. You can quickly identify coverage gaps and run flexible what-if analysis to remodel until you have a solid plan based on all sales metrics.

Commission and Incentive Management

Being able to model achievable incentive plans is key to retaining and motivating top talent and motivating them to overachieve. Because companies typically deal in different markets and geographies, modeling flexible commission plans that suit these regions is key but must still be in line with corporate guidelines. Oracle Planning Cloud for Sales Performance delivers this modeling capability in one platform. With the rich calculation capabilities, it can facilitate the automation of complex commission calculations and also model accruals earmarked for future payout, while providing rich analytics around the revenue, retention, and costs associated with various scenarios.

Advanced Analytics

By combining data from your SFA system and other relevant systems onto one platform, you can perform advanced analytics on a complete set of data that can uncover growth opportunities. With all your sales data on one platform, you can get a view by customer, region, product, etc. then also apply powerful multidimensional analytics and calculations provided by Oracle Planning Cloud for Sales Performance. You can create an information-rich sales environment by providing automated report generation. Additionally, extensive Microsoft Office integration through Oracle’s Smart View add-in allows any type of ad hoc analysis.

Reduced Upfront Costs

Speed Up-to-date Upgrades

Flexibility Scalability

PREDICTIVE FORECASTS FOR ACCURATE RESULTS

RICH ANALYTICS FOR DEEPER INSIGHTS

EXTENSIVE MODELING CAPABILITIES

MODERN AND MOBILE TOOLS

REMOVE RISK

MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS

ACHIEVE TARGETS

MODERNIZE WORKFORCE

Modern Sales Forcasting Delivers Results

Modern sales forecasting delivers results. Combining Oracle’s Planning Cloud for Sales Performance with your current SFA investment can help remove risk by providing predictive forecasts for accurate results. The solution enables you to make informed decisions with rich analytics for deeper insights, and better plan with extensive modeling capabilities to ensure higher achievement of targets.

Oracle’s Planning Cloud for Sales Performance gives sales leaders confidence in driving their business forward, focusing on:

• Uncovering growth opportunities

• Aligning resources to optimize performance

• Retaining top talent

• Increasing forecast predictability

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