Specify the Types of Forecast Adjustments Sales Managers Can Use

Sales managers can adjust forecasts on the Products tab in a number of ways. They can adjust the revenue totals for products or groups of products, or they can adjust the product quantities, for example.

A salesperson didn't get around to entering the potential sale of 20 Green Servers? No problem! The manager can add the servers to the forecast without creating an opportunity. Managers can also enter their best case and worst-case forecast scenarios. All of the adjustments and scenarios get passed up the management chain. You should decide which forecast adjustment types you want to use in your sales organization and disable the rest. There's no point for managers to enter the best-case or worst-case scenarios if their management doesn't view them.

Available Forecast Adjustment Types

Managers select the adjustment type they want to use from the Show list on the Product tab. Here are the available adjustment types:

• Forecast

  Managers can adjust the revenue for products or product groups for each forecast submission window. And they can even enter revenue for products that aren't associated with any opportunities. These revenue adjustments get reflected in the forecast landing page charts.

• Best Case

  Managers can use this forecast to enter their best-case scenario numbers. You can also make it possible for sales managers to view the best case or worst case forecast totals on the Forecasts landing page. You must expose the Best Case and Worst Case fields on the landing page layout using Application Composer. Some Oracle customers also write Groovy scripts to automatically enter the sum of submitted and potential sales.

• Worst Case

  Managers can use this forecast to indicate their best case scenario numbers. A Groovy script you create could automatically enter the submitted opportunity numbers.

• Quantity

  Makes it possible to forecast and adjust forecasts by product quantity. This is the only adjustment type not displayed in the list by default.

• All Totals

  Displays a table summarizing the totals for all the different forecast adjustment types. Here managers can update the total revenue forecast for the quarter, rather than updating the individual monthly numbers on the Forecast selection.

Here's a screenshot of the Products tab highlighting the Show list:

Specify What Adjustment Types Managers Can Use

Here's how to specify which adjustment types sales managers can use:

1. Open the task Manage Standard Lookups from the Setup and Maintenance work area:

   • Offering: Sales

   • Functional Area: Sales Foundation

   • Show: All Tasks

   • Task: Manage Standard Lookups

2. On the Manage Standard Lookups page, search for the lookup type ORA_ZSF_SHOW_METRICS or the meaning Forecast metric options.

3. Highlight the row containing this lookup type.

4. In the Lookup Codes region, make sure Enabled is selected only for the forecast adjustments you want to use.

5. Click Save and Close.