An effective S&OP process must include input from the field which ultimately drives the rest of the company’s operating plan. In this demo, starting with the view of what a VP of sales might see, you will see how familiar spreadsheet-based data and formulas are used to manage collecting field-based data.

Here, we show the interaction with one of the field sales users. You can see how the latest actuals are refreshed online into the forecast data. The user can then work offline to provide updates to existing forecast items and add new ones. When ready, with the click of a button the user is able to submit changes which are then seen by other users within the S&OP process.

Back with the VP of Sales view, you will see how changes from the sales rep are automatically consolidated into a rolled up view of the field sales forecast. With BCP, you can see an audit trail of all changes at a cell, row, and even for the entire forecast level. You can even recreate the sales forecast data as of any time to support analytics. Once done reviewing the unit forecast data, the VP reviews an aggregated view of the revenue forecast from all the reps. Adjustments are then made to the overall number and shared with the rest of the SOP team.

Operations is able to review the unit forecast updates in a read-only view and, as needed, can exchange comments with the sales force. Operations then focuses on the aggregated view of the unit forecast data from all the reps. Based on the forecast data, operations can review the consensus forecast and then make adjustments for the supply commit for the products. BCP can also support an exploded BOM view of the forecast data which can drive a detailed production schedule.

Executive visibility into the SOP process is important for any company. With BCP, executives are able to review changes to key operating metrics at a dashboard level and then drill down to see what updates drove the metric changes. Charts and dashboards are easily configured for any data and can be used offline since all data is managed from within Excel.

With BCP, changes to the data model and process are managed by a process owner and shared with the field without having to send out any new spreadsheets. In the administrative view, a new column will be added to demonstrate how changes to the data model are made for the process.

Now back in the view of the sales rep, the change to the data model is refreshed into the existing spreadsheet. Without any cutting or pasting, just like when the VP of Sales saw the new row, adding and subtracting columns are handled automatically by BCP.