Collaborative Forecasts in Salesforce enable effective sales management by projecting and planning sales cycles from pipeline to closed deals. This article describes Optimizing Sales through Collaborative Forecasts in Salesforce.
- Forecasts represent expected sales based on opportunities grouped into categories such as Pipeline, Best Case, Commit, Closed, and Most Likely.
- The forecasts page displays totals and subtotals for these categories, reflecting opportunities from one or multiple forecast categories based on Salesforce setup.
- The forecasts grid organizes data by forecast rollup, time period, and optionally by product family and territory.
- Users can view forecasts and related opportunities for individuals or their subordinates in the forecast hierarchy. They have the flexibility to adjust their own forecasts, as well as those of subordinates and territories one level below.
How to implement Collaborative Forecasts
Beginning in Winter ’24, Collaborative Forecasts are automatically enabled with default settings. For organizations created before Winter ’24, manual activation of Collaborative Forecasts is required to access these default settings.
To learn more about Collaborative forecasts elements, click Collaborative Forecasts Elements (salesforce.com)
Forecast types
- Forecast types provide diverse perspectives on your sales teams’ projected sales.
- Each type can be configured to utilize distinct data, measures, dates, and filters, enabling the collection of forecast information tailored to your business needs.
- Enabling multiple forecast types offers flexibility in displaying varied combinations of data for each forecast.
- Users can easily switch between active forecast types on the forecasts page.
Forecast Rollup Methods in Collaborative Forecasts
In single forecast category rollups, opportunities within each forecast category are aggregated to create distinct forecasts for each category.
By default, cumulative forecast rollups aggregate opportunities from various forecast categories into cumulative forecast categories.
The default forecast categories and the opportunities that rollup to each category is explained in How to use Forecasting tool for mortgage firms in Salesforce – Mortgage Banking Technology | Origination Strategy Consulting (takefiveconsulting.com).
Setting up users for Collaborative Forecasting
- Go to Users from Setup menu.
- Select the ‘Allow Forecasting’ checkbox.
Add a Forecasts Tab
- Navigate to Setup, enter “App Manager” in the Quick Find box, select App Manager, and click “Edit quick action” for your Lightning app.
- Click on “Navigation Items”.
- Move Forecasts from the Available column to the Selected column.
- Save your changes.
Define Forecast Managers and Their Subordinates
Grant users permission to access the Forecasts tab, ensuring they have the necessary privileges to view forecast details. In Lightning Experience, to add the Forecasts Tab to a Lightning App, navigate to Setup, enter “App Manager” in the Quick Find box, select App Manager, and click “Edit quick action” for your Lightning app. Subsequently, click on “Navigation Items.”
Set up your user role hierarchy
Set up your forecast hierarchy by assigning a forecast manager at the top level. Ensure that each sales manager overseeing subordinates is designated as a forecast manager. For territory forecasts, assign a forecast manager to each relevant territory.
Enable Partner Portal Users to Add Opportunities in Collaborative Forecasts
Incorporate forecasts from partner user opportunities by adding partner portal users to your team’s role-based forecast hierarchy if your sales team collaborates with partners. However, note that partner portal users won’t have access to the Forecasts page or its functionality.
Forecast Adjustments and Manager Judgments in Collaborative Forecasts
- We can allow forecast managers and users who anticipate differences between the current forecast values and future sales results to adjust the forecast rollup values in Collaborative Forecasts.
- This can be done in the Forecast settings section
This article gave a brief overview of Optimizing Sales through Collaborative Forecasts in Salesforce. Next step is to set up quotas for each user using Salesforce Forecasting. We will discuss about it in the next article.
Take Five Consulting is a technology company, based in Virginia U.S., that specializes in the Mortgage Banking vertical especially LOS implementation and application development. Take Five Consulting creates and implement mortgage technology and software specifically for Mortgage Industry.
