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Global Forecasting: Efficiency, Accuracy, Growth
技术
- 分析与建模 - 预测分析
- 应用基础设施与中间件 - 数据可视化
- 功能应用 - 企业资源规划系统 (ERP)
适用功能
- 商业运营
- 销售与市场营销
服务
- 软件设计与工程服务
- 系统集成
挑战
Research has shown that forecasting is a thorny issue. In a survey of 1,700 companies, research firm CSO Insights found that only 46% of forecast deals ended up in the “win” column (CSO Insights “2013 Sales Management Optimization Study”). Lack of accurate sales metrics means that executives are stuck leading and managing based on hunches and instinct. Before establishing a relationship with C9, the sales team at Yahoo had a fundamental lack of trust in forecast numbers. Pipelines were plagued by excessive subjectivity, and rampant “shadow accounting” in Excel spreadsheets was common. Overall, unnecessary friction and poor communication existed between management and the sales team. “We had the same conversation each week, arguing about the numbers,” says Patrick O’Leary, Yahoo Senior Director of Sales Operations and Effectiveness. Problems at the Rep Level: Because they lacked well-defined forecasting metrics, salespeople had trouble following a consistent and disciplined selling process. Salespeople spent an inordinate amount of time each week gathering information to create their forecasts; this pulled them away from core selling activities. Problems at the Management Level: Sales managers found it cumbersome and time-intensive to cope with shadow-accounting practices and consolidate information from many spreadsheets. Confusion around reported numbers made it difficult to gauge the actual status of deals and their probability of closing. Problems at the Executive Level: Lack of faith in the accuracy of forecast numbers made it difficult to make strategic business decisions. Forecast data was vulnerable to holes and inaccuracies whenever someone was hired or fired, which made it difficult for executives to balance downstream business operations.
关于客户
By keeping people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world, Yahoo! Inc. creates value for advertisers who want to establish relationships with Yahoo users. Currently Yahoo counts on a team of nearly 1,000 members to sell advertising.
解决方案
Based on positive results of an initial rollout of C9 Pipeline and C9 Forecast in June 2012, Yahoo went on to implement C9 solutions to teams across North America, Asia, and Europe. Yahoo uses quantitative data generated by C9 Pipeline to streamline, organize, and enhance the forecasting process. With C9, Yahoo can now benchmark its results against past performance. And with C9’s predictive capabilities, based on hundreds of signals associated with each deal opportunity in the pipeline, Yahoo gets a quantitative assessment (expressed as a “C9 score”) of the quality of their deals. In addition, C9 analyzes qualitative data such as “time since last touch” and changes in close dates. This information is rolled up into an opportunity-specific risk assessment and marked accordingly as high, medium, or low risk.
运营影响
数量效益