Enabling Advanced Sales Forecasting
Before users can start planning, you must enable Advanced Sales Forecasting features.
Based on your selections, dimensions, forms, and measures are created.
Note:
- If you will also be using Quota Planning, enable and configure Quota Planning first.
-
Define all optional and custom dimensions the first time you enable features. This creates the Advanced Sales Forecasting business model. Because you can’t add additional dimensions later, consider carefully the dimensions required for your business. Note that you can add reporting (attribute) dimensions later using the Dimension Editor.
-
You can’t disable features later.
- From the Home page, click Application
, and then click Configure
.
- From the Configure list, click Advanced Sales Forecasting.
- On the Configure page, click Enable Features.
- Select the features to enable, and then click Enable.
While you can enable more features later, Oracle recommends that you enable only the features that planners currently require.
Table 5-1 Enabling Advanced Sales Forecasting Features
| Enable | Description |
|---|---|
| Planning By |
Enable sales forecast planning by territory or resource and add custom dimensions. Select the type of hierarchy for advanced sales forecasting. You can plan by territory or by resource. If you've already enabled Quota Planning, the Planning By dimension is selected for you. For example, if you chose to plan by Territory in Quota Planning, planning by Territory is automatically selected for you in Advanced Sales Forecasting. Optionally, enable these additional commonly-used dimensions, which can be different than the dimensions selected for Quota Planning.
These core custom dimensions have pre-defined functionality and artifacts associated with them. You must add custom dimensions when you first enable Advanced Sales Forecasting. You can add up to three additional custom dimensions in Map/Rename Dimensions. |
| Planning Time Granularity |
Enable planning by the selected time granularity. You can plan at the monthly level or at the weekly level. By default, monthly planning is enabled. If you select weekly and monthly planning, you must also select an option for mapping weekly data to monthly data. Forms are designed so you can view plan data at the granularity you select. If you select both weekly and monthly, you can see data in the forms at either the monthly or weekly level. You can also leverage a rolling forecast range at a weekly, monthly, or quarterly granularity. You can plan continuously at a weekly level for 13, 26, or 52 weeks, at a monthly level for 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 months, or at a quarterly level for 4, 6, or 8 quarters. When you enable rolling forecast, the Rolling Forecast scenario is created. When you update the current time period, forms are updated to add or drop time periods to reflect the updated rolling forecast range. |
| Predictive Planning |
Enable the ability to predict future sales forecast values based on historical revenue. If you have historical revenue data by territory or detail level (such as product or customer), you can perform a statistical analysis on the data to predict future results. |
| Integrations: Target Quota from Quota Planning |
Enable the ability to integrate target quota data from Quota Planning. If you've also enabled Quota Planning, enabling this option creates a data map: Quota Planning Sales Forecast Integration. When your quota planning is finalized, you can push the final target quota numbers by Territory or Resource from Quota Planning to use as a starting point for your sales forecast in Advanced Sales Forecasting. For more information, see Integrating Quota Planning and Advanced Sales Forecasting. |
| Map/Rename Dimensions |
You must enable, map, and rename custom dimensions the first time you enable features. You can't rename Measures or the Territory or Resource dimension names. |
The Advanced Sales Forecasting artifacts are populated, including dimensions, forms, and measures.
Videos
| Your Goal | Watch This Video |
|---|---|
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Learn about enabling and configuring forecasting with different time granularities. |
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Learn about enabling Advanced Sales Forecasting. |
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Tutorials
Tutorials provide instructions with sequenced videos and documentation to help you learn a topic.
| Your Goal | Learn How |
|---|---|
| See how to enable and configure Advanced Sales Forecasting in Sales Planning. Learn how to set variables, prepare actual and forecast data, and verify the configuration. |
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