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Benefits of Keystoneä Sales Forecasting System [back to Top]

Provide a Company-wide standardised Forecasting Platform Foster a common company culture
Allow setting of clear goals for Forecasting Managers Encourage knowledge sharing between Managers
Encourage a “one version of the truth” approach to sales Improve sales and performance reporting
Allow multi-level reporting across the organisation Allow for variance reporting and product group reporting
Avoid the “spreadsheet chaos” of ad hoc systems Reduce version control issues by centralising the system
Reduce data input and data overload for Managers Require no specialist IT system knowledge by users
Use a standard MS Office application and reduce software investment Are based on a robust, flexible model
Can be maintained externally and flexibly with Help Desk support, Training, etc. Allow costs to be budgeted accurately

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reporting part of the system is menu driven and relies on no particular Excel expertise on the part of the user of the system.

The reports are usually tabular and allow for subtotals and aggregation of the sales forecasts using product hierarchies to the level of predicting Company level sales.

The manipulation of the individual product forecast is done using a second Excel spreadsheet that accesses data from the reporting environment.

The system is presented as a menu driven set of options under program control. The data is presented as charts and tables the user can access to estimate how his chosen forecast will fit in with the existing history, or even his previous forecasts for intermediate or following years.

The Forecaster is required to make a minimum of data entry, annual level forecasts, but also to maintain his preferred monthly allocation profiles and the future average selling price (ASP) estimates in order to see a complete picture of monthly unit or cash sales.

The data is then presented as various charts and tables that the user can access to estimate how his chosen forecast will fit in with the existing history, or even his previous forecasts for intermediate or following years.

The system does not have any predictive forecasting algorithms as there are far too many available in all the possible variations and in a multi user environment everyone would want a different method. Allowing the forecaster to use his own methods outside the system brings freedom of expression for the product manager. The system is designed to administer the forecasts that expert users arrive at, by whatever method, as a Company record contributing to the overall Company Forecast that is available through the system. One manager responsible for a small part of the overall Company product range can manipulate his area in confidence but still be able to see the overall outcome of his efforts on the complete Company level scenario.

The Forecaster is required to make a minimum of data entry, annual level forecasts, but also to maintain his preferred monthly allocation profiles and the future average selling price (ASP) estimates in order to see a complete picture of monthly unit or cash sales.

Forecasting Managers as users require no particular skills in Excel. The system does, however, require some expert knowledge to maintain it, e.g. new product introductions, periodic annual rollover, etc. This is accomplished by appointing a  System Administrator, a role which may be combined with a user or be a separate individual. Alternatively an external resource can be used, Canna Consulting Limited can provide such comprehensive support services on a contractual basis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Keystoneä Sales Forecasting series of systems is built upon the core of a proven system that has been refined over 10 years of continuous use. It has been use by Product Managers in a pharmaceutical marketing environment to predict product line level sales for the current year and up to the next five years.

Canna Consulting Limited has updated the system, which is built using Microsoft Excel, to MS Office 2003 standards. The system has proven to be robust, flexible and capable of being adapted to any company or sector. It uses simple but effective modelling to produce monthly allocations of sales forecasts against known distribution profiles. It allows for many levels of reporting to be built into the reporting section from MS Excel pivot tables to bespoke report layouts.

The system relies on two sets of spreadsheets, one is the database of products, sales history, forecasts, budgets and reports and the second is a toolset that uses the data from the database to report individual product lines and calculate the outcome of applying various cash or unit based forecasts.

The latest version of the system supports multicurrency scenarios with the ability to forecast for one country's currency but report in a different one if so required for a parent or group.