Bookshelf v7.7: About Sales Volume Planning

Sales volume planning is an iterative process by which consumer goods manufacturers model the projected sales for an upcoming period. Companies capture and update salesperson-influenced data pertaining to the quantity or value of product that will be purchased by their customers during a given period of time.

NOTE: This chapter uses the term quantity to represent any amount in sales volume planning. You can also use a monetary amount, such as currency, in sales volume planning. However, you cannot execute sales volume planning using quantity and monetary amounts at the same time.

Companies use sales volume planning as part of their annual forecasting process based on the following data:

These data sets make the sales volume planning process possible and provide feedback, in the form of baseline and target quantities, for current and future sales volume plans. This data may be developed internally or supplied by a third party. Refer to Table 11 for definitions and sources of these data sets.

Companies should perform complex trending and data modification on the initial load of historical records, such as shipment history, before importing this data into Siebel base tables.

Table 11. Sales Volume Planning Data Sets
Data Set	Definition	Possible Sources
Baseline	The amount of volume that would have been sold in the absence of a promotional event.	Shipments to accounts information. Customer warehouse withdrawal information provided by a customer to the manufacturer or from a third-party data source.
Incremental	The amount of volume sold over and above baseline that can be attributed to a promotional event.	Derived by calculating the difference between customer warehouse withdrawals, or shipments, and baseline. Provided by a third-party data source. Precalculated by incorporating lift matrices or using an educated estimation.
Target (Also referred to as quota or objective)	The amount of volume a manufacturer expects its sales force to sell in a given period.	Based on shipment, baseline, or consumption data from a prior period. Modification of above data based on a factor such as a growth or decline rate expected for the upcoming period.
Shipments	The amount of product shipped to customers.	Virtually always stored in, and imported from, an order processing system or customer data warehouse.
Consumption	The amount of product purchased and used by consumers.	Usually provided by a third-party data source. May be derived by using customer warehouse withdrawals as a proxy.