A world-renowned semiconductor manufacturer with 50,000 employees and 80+ offices worldwide, has some of the most complex forecasting requirements of any business.
The business implemented Salesforce and consolidated the majority of its processes and data management under the platform. However, forecasting remained outside of Salesforce, fostering a number of operational challenges.
The organization’s legacy forecasting system was outdated, cumbersome, and siloed from the rest of the business. Forecasts were built with incomplete data, risking accuracy. In addition, working across two systems meant double the work for its teams.
The organization risked unexpected costs, difficulty gauging business performance, and revenue leakage.
The business first turned to Advanced Account Forecasting in Salesforce to bring its forecasting processes under a single system. There were limitations to what Salesforce’s solution alone could provide, but once paired with Valorx Fusion, the manufacturer achieved the optimal forecasting experience it desired.
4 Forecasting Challenges for the Semiconductor Manufacturer:
- Duplicate Work: Moving large volumes of data back and forth across systems was inefficient and taxing on its teams.
- Incomplete Data: the continuous movement of data across systems increased the risk of data gaps and inaccurate data, which put forecast reliability at risk.
- Usability and Adoption: Implementing Advanced Account Forecasting meant change management, training, and driving adoption which could lead to prolonged disruption to the business. its new forecasting solution needed to be user friendly and easy to adopt.
- Custom Requirements: It sought out capabilities that were not native to Salesforce, such as a dynamic matrix UI or swift overflow handling.
Inaccurate forecasting can lead to a number of costly outcomes such as overproduction (and storage expenses), underproduction and missed sales, and significant workflow inefficiencies.
By solving forecasting challenges, manufacturers have a lot to gain - including a potential 60% increase in profit margins according to a Gartner report.
The business did not appear to have a clear path forward until Valorx Fusion entered the conversation.
The Solution: Salesforce and Valorx Fusion Together
Advanced Account Forecasting met some of the manufacturer’s forecasting needs: improved forecasting accuracy, better visibility into performance and deal opportunities, and improved collaboration.
However, the interface was considerably different from its legacy system and lacked specific functionalities it needed. Successful process adoption was at risk with teams potentially struggling to work in the new platform.
Valorx Fusion enhanced the native Salesforce user interface and enabled a level of customization that was not otherwise possible. These are the ways the semiconductor manufacturer was able to achieve its ideal forecasting experience by combining Salesforce’s Advanced Account Forecasting with Valorx Fusion.
A streamlined user experience
By leveraging Excel spreadsheets as the interface for managing live Salesforce data, a number of processes within Salesforce were simplified:
- Comprehensive and customized views: The team could select and edit live Salesforce records without multiple clicks/steps, navigating between tabs, or taking repetitive steps
- Bulk record editing: Teams are able to click and drag, copy and paste, drag and drop to modify data. Tools like Mass Modifier allow users to set specific parameters for which data to update. Users can now view and edit thousands of records at a time without any impact on performance.
- Power forecasts with Excel formulas: Its Salesforce users can leverage formulas to support a range of forecasting needs - they can leverage historical data to project future demand trends, adjust forecasts based on seasonality, set reorder points and optimal order quantities, perform cost analyses, and much more.
Advanced forecasting capabilities
With Fusion, the business was able to power complex forecasting needs with live Salesforce data using advanced Excel capabilities.
- Dynamic telescoping: Salesforce limits the time periods with which you can view forecasts, whereas Valorx Fusion allows for Telescoping, enabling users to view a single forecast and toggle between daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly views at any point in time. They are also able to view aggregated data across different years and months.
- Comprehensive, multi-measure views: Salesforce’s restrictive interface makes it difficult to handle complex, multi-dimensional data in one place. With Fusion, the manufacturer has multi-dimensional views of measures rather than only a 2-dimensional view. This allows them to view/edit multiple measures including different time periods, product lines, regional variations, all at the same time.
- Fusion users can also forecast with different types of measures (quantity, average price, value) and dimensions (customer group, account, product) in a single view.
- Streamlined rollover management: With a spreadsheet interface and bulk editing capabilities, the manufacturer is able to easily handle positive and negative rollover, and update its forecasts in real time. Forecasting data stays up to date and complete, never leaving Salesforce.
By enhancing Advanced Account Forecasting’s capabilities with Fusion, the business unified its end-to-end revenue management under one system. The semiconductor manufacturer was able to drive Salesforce user adoption without a loss to operational efficiency, gain greater business predictability, and cut down on the costs (costs due to maintaining its legacy system, inefficient workflows, and poor forecasting).
Don't use Advanced Account Forecasting? Valorx Fusion can still elevate your forecasting accuracy and efficiency. Let us show you.
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