Category: Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF)

Streamlining Planning & Forecasting with Salesforce CPF

Sales planning and forecasting is a crucial aspect of any business, as it helps organizations anticipate their future sales and align their resources accordingly. However, the traditional approach to this process can be tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, leading to frustration for CEOs, marketing teams, sales managers, product managers, and financial teams. Fortunately, with advancements in technology, there is a more efficient and accurate solution. In this blog, we will explore the pain points of the sales planning and forecasting process and how Salesforce customer planning and forecasting (CPF) can streamline the entire process, saving time and providing more accurate predictions for all involved parties.

CEO
The CEO is typically responsible for setting the overall strategy of the company, including sales and marketing goals. They may have final approval on all major decisions related to customer planning and forecasting. Even though they’re not as hands-on in the planning and forecasting process as Sales Managers and Product Managers are, they still have issues that can be solved with an enhanced customer planning and forecasting tool.

    • Lack of visibility into departmental progress: Since they’re not as involved in the process, CEOs need to be able to review the progress of each department when it’s convenient for them. Due to running the company, sometimes that review time comes at 8 pm or other times when their employees aren’t working. They can’t afford to wait for department heads to both collect and then send the necessary information. At that point, the data is already outdated and could be filled with manual errors.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a platform where CEOs can check in on the progress of each department at any time of the day with confidence that the data is in real-time. This helps them know which delegation activities work best for certain department heads, and reveal those that need improvement.
    • Outdated Technology: Unbeknownst to most CEOs, the planning and forecasting technology their company uses is hindering their team’s performance and costing them revenue. Spreadsheets continue to become outdated as consumer behavior has drastically changed since 2019. This technology can’t support the thousands of equations required within the forecasting process. And using multiple, disconnected systems to accomplish this entire process is too time-consuming and error-prone.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF is the ultimate tool to run every step of the sales planning and forecasting process in today’s world. With three major updates per year, CEOs can be confident that the tool is always staying up to date with the consumers constantly changing behavior. Salesforce also does a great job of listening to their customer’s requests so these system updates contain requests from people actually using the tool. Salesforce CPF provides companies with one centralized area for both internal and external teams to collaborate on and view their KPIs in real time. CEOs can jump in at any time to see the ongoing process and comment if they need to. The advanced tool can also support custom equations required in the planning and forecasting process. This information can automatically be analyzed and displayed in reports & dashboards so CEOs can review them at any time of the day without needing to wait.
    • KPI Reports and Dashboards: Typically, CEOs need to wait for meetings with department heads to view sales planning and forecasting KPIs. It takes time to gather this information, and then even more time to prepare it for a presentation.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides one dashboard for CEOs to view all KPIs in real time. Comprised of multiple reports, this dashboard can be modified exactly how the viewer would like. It can contain out-of-the-box reports as well as the company’s custom KPIs.

Sales Manager
Sales managers are responsible for managing the sales team and ensuring that sales goals are met. They are heavily involved in creating and reviewing sales forecasts. The CSO oversees the sales team and is responsible for meeting revenue targets.

    • Inaccurate Data: Accurate data is always required to forecast sales but too often Sales Managers face challenges in obtaining access to this. Data is either already outdated by the time it reaches the Sales Manager, or there is simply not enough. Inaccurate or incomplete data leads to inaccurate sales forecasts, severely impacting the overall sales strategy.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a centralized platform for all customer data: purchase history, preferences, demographics, and much more. This reduces the likelihood of data errors caused by hosting this info across siloed systems. CPF provides real-time reports and dashboards to track the progress of each department and make data-driven decisions based on accurate data.
    • Inefficient & Manual Processes: The sales planning and forecasting process is extremely time-consuming and complex, which tends to lead to inefficiencies across the board. There are many players involved in the process, leading to additional errors. Sales managers often have to manually gather and consolidate data from multiple sources, a tedious and error-prone process.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF speeds up manual tasks via automated data collection and analysis, real-time updates and alerts, forecasting accuracy, and enhanced collaboration and communication. It also gives clients AI-powered forecasting capabilities that use algorithms to analyze historical data, current trends, and additional critical info. This eliminates the need for error-prone manual data entry and saves Sales managers tons of time.
    • Poor Team Collaboration: Sales forecasts constantly need to be communicated to stakeholders but poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and misalignments. Departments need to be completely transparent as certain processes can’t be started until others are completed correctly. Constant communication helps fellow department heads with expectations so that they can hit the ground running when they need to contribute. Sales Managers need to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page to execute sales forecasting quickly and accurately.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Email notifications containing the latest sales forecasting updates can automatically be scheduled to send to key members. These notifications can be customized to show the details each client prefers. The data is in real-time so that reports aren’t already outdated as they are with archaic systems such as Excel and others.
    • Limited Visibility: Sales Managers require visibility into the sales pipeline to accurately forecast future sales, but often, they may not have complete visibility. Some parts may require information to be sent from colleagues, slowing the process down. Not having access to all of the data makes it difficult to identify potential roadblocks and opportunities for improvement.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF gives Sales Managers a comprehensive view of every detail across each department that is related to the planning and forecasting process and sales pipeline. Without the need to access different systems to view key data, this rapidly accelerates the planning process and reduces the manual time spent consolidating the data into one view.
    • Unforeseen Market Changes: Unforeseen market changes can drastically impact sales forecasts and catch everyone off guard. These changes include economic factors, changes in consumer behavior, and shifts in the competitive landscape. Sales Managers need to adapt quickly to these changes and adjust their forecasts accordingly. The problem is, no human can accurately predict what’s going to happen in the future.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Scenario Planning within CPF helps create different scenarios and models to simulate the impact of possible market changes on one’s sales performance. This helps Sales Managers understand the potential risks and opportunities associated with different market scenarios. If these market changes happen, Sales Managers are well prepared to adjust to “plan B” without major profit loss.

Financial Teams
Financial analysts may be involved in creating financial models and analyzing data to help inform sales forecasts.

    • Disconnected Systems and Processes: 77% of planning processes depend on having access to accurate data. As Excel spreadsheets quickly become outdated daily, finance teams need to ensure their data is always updated. Consolidating data from multiple sources is time-consuming and extremely error-prone. By the time the data is collected and consolidated, it can already be outdated upon sharing it with other teams. Forwarding inaccurate data to other departments only continues to decrease the accuracy of the overall sales forecast. Excel spreadsheets also can’t support the infinite number of calculations and macros that a professional planning and forecasting tool can.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF gives companies one platform for all internal and external departments to run every step of the planning and forecasting process within. All data within the tool is up to date and accessible at any time of the day. So financial teams can access data after hours without needing to wait for other team members to provide them with the necessary info.
    • Time-Consuming Manual Tasks: Finance teams can’t afford any slow-downs within their processes. They need to generate timely insights, but many teams spend too much time sorting and organizing data instead of actually analyzing it.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: CPF provides financial teams with the power of bringing their own custom processes onto the Salesforce platform, streamlining it for maximum efficiency. This also keeps all members of the finance team on the same page, where other departments (heads) can also see how things are progressing in real-time. This allows them to get prepared to either act on the incoming data or provide whatever is needed to the finance team.
    • Lack of Team/Departmental Collaboration: Finance teams rely on information provided by other departments to do their job, and vice versa. When companies use multiple systems for planning and forecasting, info-sharing is slowed down tremendously.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Real-time data gives all departments insight into the information provided by their peers in separate departments. Finance doesn’t need to wait “X” days for a sales report to come in; they can simply grab this info within Salesforce at any time of the day. Collaborative forecasting enables companies to move away from disparate and isolated forecasting activities to a unified, real-time enterprise forecasting process.
    • Outdated Information: Finance needs up-to-the-minute information and they are under constant pressure to deliver these actionable insights to assist in decision-making. The lack of accurate, real-time data limits the level of detail that financial planning systems can provide.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF helps with self-service analytics to enable real-time reporting, assisting finance teams in understanding which revenue sources are underperforming, how to improve operational efficiencies, analyze the company’s performance, and develop an achievable plan for driving growth.

Product Managers
Product managers may be involved in forecasting demand for products or services to ensure that production and delivery processes run smoothly. Operations managers may be involved in forecasting demand for products or services to ensure that production and delivery processes run smoothly.

    • Inaccurate Data: Without accurate data, PMs are essentially working in the dark to develop and ship successful products. Bad data makes it difficult to make informed decisions, making it harder to move forward strategically and accurately. These manual efforts are typically error-prone.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides one system to hold all key data: customer info, market research, user info, and product info. This ensures data is accurate and up to date. The tool also eliminates the constant human-caused errors and gives PMs extra time to focus on major tasks while Salesforce CPF takes care of the tedious, repetitive ones.
    • Forecasting Delivery & Timelines: There are too many variables that it’s nearly impossible to manually predict an accurate delivery timeline. Humans also tend to underestimate the time it takes to accomplish a task. This risks overpromising and under-delivering.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: CPF helps accurately build timelines based on historical data, and future predictions. These have already been shown to be more accurate than predictions made by humans. Timelines are shared in the system for quick adjustments that can be viewed and sent out immediately.
    • Aligning Teams and Getting Buy-In: All department leaders have different objectives and priorities, leading to competing visions for the product’s direction. PMs need to navigate these priorities and bridge the gap between teams, stakeholders, and leaders. Without a centralized hub, PMs and department leaders are disconnected and can’t execute what needs to be done through emails and spreadsheets.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF provides a centralized platform for all key leaders and stakeholders to view both company-wide and departmental KPIs in real-time. No more waiting for spreadsheets to be built, cleaned up, and shared by each department, containing outdated info by the time it reaches the recipient.
    • Overwhelming Product Backlog: PMs need the entire product backlog to be visible, transparent, and clear to all stakeholders and developers. Without this, they risk misalignment of the entire team’s goals, accountabilities, and deadlines.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: The Product Roadmap provides companies with complete, real-time transparency throughout the entire process. This keeps everyone in the know, 24/7. Real-time updates can be scheduled to send automatically, or at the click of a button, alerting all appropriate teams of key updates.

CMO
The CMO is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s marketing strategy. They may be involved in market research and analysis to inform the customer planning and forecasting process. Marketing managers may be responsible for conducting market research and analyzing customer data to inform the customer planning and forecasting process.

    • Review Sales History and Make Predictions: Marketers need to utilize past sales data to help provide predictions to sales teams for the upcoming period. Having to wait for, and comb through multiple spreadsheets is too time-consuming and error-prone. Today’s marketers need a system that can streamline this process.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: Salesforce CPF holds all historical sales data across different departments of the company that is available 24/7. Marketers no longer have to wait for sales teams to find and clean up their spreadsheets before sharing them. CPF’s platform provides a collaborative area where marketers can ask questions, and see other questions from all departments that may help them accomplish their goals.
    • Provide Historical Campaign Data: Which marketing campaigns had the highest ROI? Which ones underperformed? Marketers need to gather this data, run an analysis, and debrief sales on the findings. Without a centralized platform to hold these details, marketers are using outdated information in their process. This information is key in letting sales teams know which content pieces and marketing campaigns resonate best with customers.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: The Salesforce CPF platform provides one place to hold all key campaign data: internal/external costs, revenue, and any custom information. Advanced analytics can accomplish in just minutes what takes human marketers days, sometimes weeks to complete in regards to campaign analysis. Prediction models can provide accurate predictions on how proposed marketing campaigns will perform in the upcoming period(s).
    • Tracking Always-Changing Customer Data: Marketers are responsible for collecting historical customer behavior, analyzing it, and providing predictions for the upcoming period. They need to provide the optimal price for a product based on this market research combined with their competitive landscape. With customer behavior constantly changing, this is an extremely time-consuming effort.
      • How Salesforce CPF helps: With CPF, marketers have all the historical customer data in one place. The tool can analyze the data, revealing certain trends and insights that the human eye may not catch. This is all done quicker and more accurately than any human can do. Salesforce CPF can take the analysis and provide marketers with predictions for the year which can then be shared with sales teams. This action saves days’ worth of time.

In conclusion, the sales planning and forecasting process can be a daunting task for businesses, but it is a necessary one to ensure success. The traditional approach can be archaic, time-consuming, and error-prone, leading to frustration and inefficiencies. By adopting Salesforce customer planning and forecasting, businesses can streamline the entire process, freeing up time for all department heads and providing more accurate predictions. With its advanced capabilities, businesses can make informed decisions, meet sales targets, and stay ahead of the competition. By embracing technology and innovation, businesses can take control of their sales planning and forecasting process and position themselves for growth and success.

Improving Forecasting Accuracy and Collaboration in Consumer Goods Companies with Salesforce CPF

In the world of consumer goods, companies are constantly striving to improve their forecasting accuracy, collaborate more effectively, and streamline their workflows. That’s where Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF) comes in – an all-in-one solution that helps consumer goods companies achieve these goals and more.

Benefits of Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting

One of the primary reasons that consumer goods companies are turning to Salesforce CPF is because of its advanced planning and forecasting capabilities. With Salesforce CPF, companies can create accurate sales forecasts based on historical data, current trends, and market analysis easier than ever before. These forecasts allow companies to anticipate demand more accurately, adjust inventory levels, and optimize their supply chain operations. This can help companies lower costs, reduce waste, and improve customer satisfaction.

Another key benefit of Salesforce CPF is its ability to improve team collaboration. Sales, marketing, and supply chain teams can collaborate in a single source of truth, sharing data and insights in real time. This breaks down silos and enables teams to make more informed decisions based on a comprehensive business view.

The ability to add new products to your sales forecast is critical for companies to remain competitive and stay ahead of market trends. Accurately forecasting the potential sales volume of a new product is essential to planning production, allocating resources, and making informed business decisions. Salesforce CPF allows companies to track new product launches, collect customer feedback, and add new products to their sales pipeline efficiently, delivering a comprehensive view of your sales strategy. Proper collaboration between the brand team and buyers is essential to anticipate sales ramp, and it requires close attention to customer business plans to accurately forecast and add new products to the sales pipeline.

Overall, Salesforce CPF provides consumer goods companies with advanced planning and forecasting capabilities, improved team collaboration, and the ability to add new products to their sales pipeline, enabling them to optimize their supply chain operations and remain competitive in the market.

Get Started with Salesforce CPF Today

Salesforce CPF is a powerful tool for consumer goods companies looking to improve their forecasting accuracy, collaborate more effectively, and streamline their workflows. By leveraging advanced analytics, real-time collaboration, and automation, Salesforce CPF can help companies drive revenue growth, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction. As competition in the consumer goods industry continues to intensify, companies that adopt Salesforce CPF are poised to gain a competitive advantage and thrive in the future. Learn more about Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. We’ve worked with nearly 1,100+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. We are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board and Salesforce Managed Service Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot. If you want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Challenges for Maintaining Accurate Forecasts for Consumer Goods

Forecasting for consumer goods firms can be incredibly challenging to manage throughout the year due to various factors impacting demand, production, and supply chain operations. These challenges can lead to significant losses and inefficiencies if not managed effectively. With the help of Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF), consumer goods companies can optimize their planning and forecasting activities to stay competitive and meet their business objectives.

Challenges with Forecasting for Consumer Goods Companies

One of the main challenges of forecasting for consumer goods firms is the unpredictable nature of consumer demand. Consumers’ purchasing behavior can be influenced by various factors, such as cultural trends, seasonal changes, economic conditions, and unanticipated events (COVID-19). These factors can lead to sudden shifts in demand that can be difficult to predict, resulting in overstocked or understocked inventory levels, leading to substantial inventory and monetary losses for the company.

In addition to demand volatility, forecasting can also be impacted by production challenges, such as unexpected delays, supply chain disruptions, or manufacturing issues. These challenges can lead to unexpected inventory shortages, production delays, and increased costs, all impacting the company’s bottom line.

Another challenge with forecasting for consumer goods firms is the limitations of traditional forecasting methods, such as using Excel spreadsheets. Excel spreadsheets are time-consuming and inefficient to manage, especially for large-scale operations, and can also be prone to errors and inaccuracies. Learn more issues around forecasting and planning by visiting our recent blog: Overcoming the Obstacles of Consumer Goods Planning with Salesforce CPF

Overcome Planning & Forecasting Challenges with Salesforce CPF

To overcome these challenges, consumer goods firms can adopt advanced forecasting and planning tools that utilize machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. Salesforce CPF is one of these tools that help companies make more accurately forecasted demands, optimize production and inventory levels, and reduce the risk of stock-outs or overstocking. By leveraging Salesforce CPF, consumer goods firms can improve their forecasting accuracy, reduce inefficiencies, and minimize the risk of losses, ultimately leading to a more profitable and efficient business operation.

Learn more about Salesforce CPF.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. We’ve worked with nearly 1,100+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. We are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board and Salesforce Managed Service Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot. If you want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

 

Overcoming the Obstacles of Consumer Goods Planning with Salesforce CPF

For years, Excel spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for many consumer goods businesses for customer planning and forecasting. As the consumer goods market becomes more complicated and dynamic, the limitations of using Excel are becoming increasingly evident.

Excel spreadsheets can be prone to errors and inaccuracies, which can have significant consequences for forecasting success. Additionally, Excel lacks the visibility and analytics capabilities that Consumer goods companies need to make informed decisions about sales strategies, production planning, and inventory levels. Siloed departments, ongoing forecast accuracy issues, and problems with tracking are also common challenges that companies face when using Excel for forecasting.

As such, the days of relying solely on Excel as a forecasting tool are over, and companies in the consumer goods industry must explore more comprehensive solutions to stay competitive. In this blog, we will discuss why the consumer goods industry needs to shift away from Excel spreadsheets and towards more sophisticated solutions, such as Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (Salesforce CPF), to drive growth and success.

Pain Points of Excel Spreadsheet Planning & Forecasting

Excel is a powerful tool for managing and analyzing data, and it has been widely used for planning and forecasting for many years. As the market and business environment become more complicated, Excel may not be the best tool for planning and forecasting for several reasons:

Limited scalability: Excel has limitations in terms of handling large data sets, complex calculations, and multiple scenarios. As businesses grow and become more complex, Excel can’t keep up with the demands of planning and forecasting.

Lack of collaboration: Excel files are typically stored on local computers or shared drives, making it difficult for multiple people to work on the same document simultaneously. This can lead to version control issues and errors in data entry, which can impact the accuracy of the forecasts.

Difficulty in data integration: Excel can import and export data from various sources, but it may not be able to handle data from different systems or sources with different formats. This can make it difficult to integrate data from multiple sources and can impact the accuracy of the forecasts.

Limited automation: Excel requires manual input and updating of data, formulas, and charts. This can be time-consuming and can lead to errors if not managed carefully. In contrast, modern planning and forecasting tools have built-in automation capabilities that can reduce manual effort and improve accuracy.

Lack of advanced analytics: Excel has limitations regarding advanced analytics capabilities, such as machine learning and predictive modeling. These techniques are becoming increasingly important in forecasting and planning, particularly in today’s market, where businesses must adapt quickly to changing circumstances.

Lack of collaboration on new Products: Excel does not support collaboration with sales staff and buyers related to new item introduction into the forecast. Having to manage this process with alternative solutions tends to result in manual updates to forecasts that are prone to user errors and inaccurate forecasts.

Streamlining Forecasting and Planning with Salesforce CPF

Salesforce CPF is an advanced solution that enables consumer goods companies to move beyond Excel spreadsheets and achieve accurate forecasting and planning. Salesforce CPF can help companies leverage real-time data to make informed decisions about inventory levels, production planning, and sales strategies. It offers a range of benefits, including improved accuracy, access to real-time data from across the organization, streamlined workflows, better collaboration, and increased efficiency.

With Salesforce CPF, companies can monitor progress against key performance indicators, plan for future sales and inventory needs, and adjust their strategies based on historical data and trends. Overall, Salesforce CPF is a powerful tool that can help consumer goods companies stay ahead of the curve in an increasingly complex and competitive market.

Learn More about Salesforce CPF

In summary, while Excel is a powerful tool for data management and analysis, it may not be the best option for planning and forecasting in today’s market due to its limitations in scalability, collaboration, data integration, automation, and advanced analytics. As such, businesses may need to consider a more modern planning and forecasting tool, such as Salesforce CPF, that can better support their needs in today’s market. Learn more about Salesforce CPF.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. We’ve worked with nearly 1,100+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. We are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board and Salesforce Managed Service Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot. If you want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

Introducing Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting

As the consumer goods industry continues to grow and evolve, so does the complexity of customer planning and forecasting. Excel spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for many companies. Still, they come with several obstacles to planning success, including inaccuracies, lack of visibility and analytics, siloed departments, ongoing forecast accuracy, and problems with tracking. These challenges often result in reduced profitability, missed sales targets, and suboptimal decision-making.

Did you know?

    • 55% don’t trust their forecast (Gartner)
    • 53% Don’t believe they have the right details (Salesforce)
    • 75% Believe their data is too siloed (Gartner)
    • 80% lack analytics to identify issues and trends (McKinsey)

To address these challenges, Salesforce offers a comprehensive solution called Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF), which is part of the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud.

Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting Benefits

Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting enables companies to make accurate sales forecasts, improve collaboration, and streamline workflows. It offers a range of benefits, including:

Improved Accuracy: With Salesforce CPF, companies can leverage real-time data to make informed decisions about inventory levels, production planning, and sales strategies. The platform’s algorithms can help identify trends and patterns that may have been missed using traditional forecasting methods.

Real-time Data: Access to data from across the organization, enabling teams to work together seamlessly and make informed decisions. Sales teams can quickly update the platform with the latest information on customer orders, inventory levels, and promotions, allowing everyone to stay on the same page.

Streamlined Workflows: Salesforce CPF offers a range of features that help streamline workflows and improve collaboration. Teams can share information easily, reduce manual data entry, and automate routine tasks, freeing up time for more strategic work.

Better Collaboration: Enables teams to work together more effectively by providing a centralized platform for data sharing, collaboration, and communication. Sales teams can work closely with supply chain, marketing, and finance teams to ensure that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.

Increased Efficiency: With Salesforce CPF, companies can streamline their forecasting and planning processes, reducing the time and effort required to make decisions. This allows teams to focus on more strategic work and helps to increase efficiency across the organization.

Get Started With Salesforce CPF

Corrao Group, a leading Salesforce implementation partner for Consumer Goods Cloud, offers a comprehensive CPF package for companies looking to improve their customer planning and forecasting processes. The package includes a Salesforce CPF license, a 2-3 month implementation timeline, and a range of features designed to help companies maximize their Salesforce CPF investment. Some of the key features of our CPF package include:

Customer Hierarchy: The CPF package includes a customer hierarchy feature that enables companies to view customer data at different levels, such as by region, store, or product category.

Product Hierarchy: The product hierarchy feature allows companies to view product data at different levels, such as by category, brand, or SKU.

Real-time Business Reporting: Configuration of real-time business reporting features that provide insights into sales performance, inventory levels, and other key metrics.

KPI Tracking: The package also includes KPI tracking features that enable companies to monitor progress against key performance indicators and adjust their strategies as needed.

Customer Planning Time Frames: The CPF package includes customer planning time frames (Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly), which help companies plan for future sales and inventory needs based on historical data and trends.

Walkthrough & Handoff: A comprehensive walkthrough and handoff process, ensuring that teams are fully trained and prepared to use the platform effectively.

In summary, the consumer goods industry faces many challenges regarding customer planning & forecasting. However, the Salesforce CPF package offers a comprehensive solution to help companies overcome these challenges and make more informed data-driven decisions. Our CPF package is an excellent option for companies looking to implement this solution quickly and effectively, with a range of features designed to improve accuracy, streamline workflows, and increase efficiency. Learn more by visiting our Salesforce Customer Planning & Forecasting page.

About Corrao Group

As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. We’ve worked with nearly 1,100+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150+ Salesforce projects. We are proud to be on the Consumer Goods Cloud Partner Advisory Board and Salesforce Managed Service Board, in addition to being the exclusive US launch partner of the Salesforce Trade Promotion Management (TPM) Pilot. If you want to learn more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!