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Cost-Margin Forecasting


The company emphasizes cost and margin analysis in product planning and sales strategy. The company wants to use cost and margin analysis to drive lifetime value.

Forecast Requirements

End users want to evaluate costs and margins on each opportunity or product revenue to determine the value of a deal. There is a need to evaluate these costs and margins over a series of scheduled revenues, as some opportunities may lose money initially, but over the long term are highly profitable.

Administrator Usage Scenario

The administrator defines a product cost/margin forecast series. The Auto Forecast Search Spec is set as follows: [Product] IS NOT NULL and [Calculated Primary Flag] = 'N'. This search pulls product revenue line items that have a product indicated into the forecast.

End User Revenue Scenario

  • Create a new opportunity or account.
  • Associate and create product revenue line items using the New Record command, revenue scripts, or revenue plans.
  • Instead of adding just revenue information, end users should add cost data for every product added.
  • Using the revenue spreadsheet, end users can view each product and its cost and margin expectations by month or week. These cost and margins can be modified accordingly and can be graphically viewed using the Chart view.

NOTE:  The spreadsheet needs to be configured so that Cost and Margin are exposed for each date.

End User Forecast Scenario

  • Create a new product cost/margin forecast.
  • In Forecast Details they see the revenues they are working on automatically pulled into their forecast.
  • End users can view the total revenue expected from each of these revenues from the Forecast Details list view or they can see the cost and margin expectations over time for each product using the spreadsheet view.
  • View a graphical presentation of this data using the Chart view or by creating reports.
  • They can adjust and submit the forecast.

NOTE:  This scenario requires minor configuration to the revenue spreadsheet view to see the Cost and Margin by each date. For more information about configuring the revenue spreadsheet view, see About Configuring Revenue and Forecast Spreadsheets.

Siebel Forecasting Guide