Forecasting Revenue
Your sales administration department keeps track of all sales representatives and their managers within Oracle Sales and Marketing. One of the key uses of this information is for rolling up sales forecasts. When a sales representative complete their forecast, it is passed up to their manager. The manager's forecasts are passed up accordingly until a company-wide forecast is generated.
The Forecast window lets you review and enter sales forecasts for yourself or your sales group. Forecasts are tied to accounting periods and product lines, as defined by your implementation team.
To review or enter new information into a forecast:
1. Enter search criteria in the Find Forecast window.
Search criteria can be as general as all forecasted information for your group or your own account, or as specific as forecasted business for a specific account within a date range. Note the default settings:
Period Name: Displays the current forecast period and the calendar from and to dates that define this period.
Sales Group: Displays the sales group you belong to.
Forecasts of: If you are a manager, the field defaults to Group/Sub Group; otherwise, it defaults to Member and your name appears in the Employee field.
Forecast Type: Defaults to Revenue.
For each period and each quota category, Oracle Sales and Marketing displays your quota, together with the total revenue credit from the pipeline that is already won, forecasted to close during the period, and upside for the period.
Oracle Sales and Marketing calculates and displays the percent of quota that you have achieved to date, based on the amounts already won.
To see a backlog of opportunities:
If you have active opportunities that were expected to close during an earlier period but didn't, the Backlog button is enabled.
- Choose Backlog to display the Opportunity window.
All opportunities that should have closed before this forecast period but haven't yet, are displayed.
To see a history of your forecasts:
A list of your earlier forecasts for the period appears.
