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Sales > Forecasts

Forecasts

Use the Forecast pages to review, adjust, and submit forecasts. A forecast is a saved snapshot of expected revenues over time. Oracle CRM On Demand calculates forecasts for each quarter and breaks down that information by fiscal month.

Forecasts in Oracle CRM On Demand automate a process that is often manual and sometimes inaccurate. Forecasts help companies to develop sales strategies. They also help companies to identify future business needs by giving managers accurate and up-to-date information about expected sales and quarterly progress toward sales targets. Individual sales representatives do not have to compile statistics. Instead, they decide when to include a record in their forecasts. The remainder of the process is automatic.

Your company can base its forecasts on any of the following:

• Opportunity revenue
• Opportunity product revenue and quantities linked to opportunities
• Account revenue
• Contact revenue

The forecast snapshots save the forecasted opportunity, product, or revenue information and the adjusted forecast totals, so that you and your managers can review and evaluate forecast trends. In addition, you can view saved forecasts to examine the history of opportunities on which the team is currently working.

Your company can set up forecasts to run on a weekly or monthly basis. At the start of the specified day (that is, at 1 minute past midnight in the time zone of the hosting facility), Oracle CRM On Demand automatically generates the forecast and displays an alert on My Homepage. After receiving this alert, you can review the forecast to analyze the newly calculated pipeline, forecast, and closed revenue against quota information.

An hour before the next scheduled forecast generation, the current forecast is automatically archived, preventing anyone from editing it.