The Breaking Point of Spreadsheets
For many mid-market consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, spreadsheets have long been the default tool for forecasting demand, allocating trade spend, and managing promotions. They’re cheap, flexible, and familiar. But as businesses grow, those same spreadsheets quickly become a bottleneck.
- Version chaos: Multiple teams updating different files leads to conflicting numbers.
- Data silos: Finance, sales, and supply chain teams each rely on their own models, creating a fragmented view of the business.
- Inaccuracy: Outdated formulas and manual inputs cause costly errors—errors that ripple across the supply chain and erode retailer trust.
Scaling with spreadsheets isn’t just inefficient—it’s risky. That’s why mid-market firms are turning to Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF), a solution built for visibility, collaboration, and growth.
What Salesforce CPF Brings to the Table
Unlike static spreadsheets, CPF centralizes planning and forecasting in a single platform. That means:
- One source of truth across sales, finance, and operations.
- Predictive forecasting using Salesforce AI to reduce error rates.
- Real-time visibility into trade spend effectiveness and account-level performance.
- Scenario planning so teams can model promotions, product launches, or shifts in demand.
For mid-market firms, CPF isn’t just an upgrade—it’s a competitive edge against larger players with deep analytics budgets.
Lessons Learned Across the Board
Working with some of the most successful CPG companies, we’ve learned:
- Excel is good until it isn’t—what works for startups eventually breaks at scale.
- Collaboration matters—CPF aligns finance, sales, and operations on a shared set of numbers.
- Visibility drives ROI—better forecasts and clearer trade spend insights translate to measurable growth.
- Scaling doesn’t always require more people—with automation, existing teams can handle more complexity.
The Bottom Line
For mid-market CPG firms, the leap from spreadsheets to Salesforce CPF isn’t just about adopting new software—it’s about adopting a new way of working. Centralized forecasting, AI-driven insights, and cross-team alignment create the foundation for sustainable growth.
Contact us today if you’d like to see how Salesforce CPF can help your organization.
