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Example: Generate Forecasts Across Multiple Regions with Advanced Account Forecasting
You can use the Advanced Account Forecasting feature to configure forecasts according to your business needs. To explain the flexibility that Advanced Account Forecasting offers, let’s consider the example of a business conglomerate spread across multiple regions. The company has a distributed account forecasting model where each region creates and maintains forecasts according to their business needs.
Required Editions
| Available in: Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions |
Account Forecast Model for Multiple Regions
Let’s look at the requirements for two different regions within the organization to illustrate how Advanced Account Forecasting can be used to address the account forecasting needs in a single instance of Manufacturing Cloud.
| Criterion | Region 1 | Region 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | Account managers work with individual key accounts. There’s a finite set of products. Large quantities of the products are shipped and therefore, forecasting by shipping location helps in reducing costs. | A large number of customers exist along with a large number of products. |
| Forecast dimensions | The Account, Product, Ship-from Location, and Period dimensions. | The Channel (modeled as a parent account with multiple child accounts), Product Category, and Period dimensions. |
| Forecast metrics | The revenue and quantity metrics for opportunities, sales agreements, and orders for account managers and regional managers. | The revenue and quantity metrics for opportunities and orders for channel managers and category managers. |
| Forecast granularity | Quarterly | Monthly |
| Forecast calculation frequency | Monthly | Monthly |
| Adjustment frequency | The adjustment frequency for account managers is the 1st to 7th of a month, and the 7th to 14th of every quarter for the regional manager. | The adjustment frequency for the channel manager is the 1st to 5th of every month, and the 6th to 8th of the month for the category managers. |
| Consensus forecast revenue and quantity | The average of the regional manager and account manager revenues and quantities. | The maximum of the channel manager and category manager forecast revenues and quantities. |
Implement Advanced Account Forecasting in the Org
Advanced Account Forecasting can address the specific requirements of each region in the organization in a single instance of Manufacturing Cloud. For the organization in the example, these are the high-level steps they must follow. You can always create custom dimensions, measures, period groups, and fact objects according to your specific business needs.
- Enable Features for Manufacturing Cloud.
- Define the forecast dimensions.
- Product
- Product Category
- Ship-from-Location
Note The Account and Period dimensions are mandatory and are available in the org. - Define the period groups: monthly and quarterly.
- Create two fact tables to store forecast facts with these fields:
Mandatory Fields
- A field that looks up to Account ID
- A text field (18 char) that has a period populated
- Fields representing forecast set and status
- Fields representing forecast quantity and revenue
Additional Fields
- Forecast Fact 1: Dimension fields for Product and Ship-from Location
- Forecast Fact 2: Dimension field for Product Category
Note Alternatively, you can extend the out-of-the-box forecast fact entity with relevant measures and dimensions. - Modify the out-of-the-box data processing engine definitions according to region-specific business needs.
- Create one forecast set each for Region 1 and Region 2.
- Define the forecast
dimensions relevant for each forecast set:
- Region 1 has the Product and Ship-from Location dimensions.
- Region 2 has the Product Category dimension.
- Configure the forecast
set for each region.
- Select the relevant forecast fact object, and then map the mandatory dimensions and measures.
- Define the forecast calculation and rollover frequencies.
- Map the relevant data processing engine definitions.
- Define the forecast measures, and then map the measures to corresponding measure fields in the custom fact object. Indicate the type of aggregation criteria (batch, computed, or user-editable), and whether to track forecast adjustments.
- Define the applicable forecast adjustment periods for each profile for the forecast sets.
- Define the forecast formulas.
- Activate the forecast sets.
- Run the data processing engine definitions directly, or create an orchestration workflow to run the data processing engine definitions.
- Define the roles, profiles, field-level security and create sharing rules, and then apply these to the users.
