Improving territory management and forecasting

Lexmark shares how it transformed its territory management and demand forecasting processes using Salesforce data within Anaplan

Salesforce AppExchange’s video series, App Talks, interviews guest speakers Brett Butler, Business Architect with the WW Sales & Service Team at Lexmark, and Jeff Powrie, Director of Deloitte Consulting LLP, to discuss the transformation that Lexmark attained with an investment in Salesforce and Anaplan.

“In our old territory management process, we took a month to assemble the data. Then we took another half a month to put it into spreadsheets, cut it all up, and email our entire customer list globally—talk about a security concern. Now with Anaplan, we got rid of all the front-end data gymnastics and the simple user interface makes gathering sales input much easier, arming the sales team with more insight. Additionally, it’s easy to reassemble data and push it back—all that goes from weeks to seconds.”

Accurate forecast planning impacts the supply chain

“We also use Anaplan for demand forecasting and pass that onto supply chain. The first key thing to realize is that this is a process that sales reps hate. They have to do it every month because we’re a manufacturer that makes and ships things all over the world. So we have to have an accurate demand forecast, but it’s the last thing in the world the sales rep likes to do. Now, imagine having to ask them to do it again because we sent them the old version of the spreadsheet. Having all that in the cloud with Anaplan, that process goes from days to seconds—when we change something, it rolls up from sales rep to district manager to regional geo and headquarters.”

Brett Butler, Business Architect, WW Sales & Service Team Lexmark

https://youtu.be/_t3MAbM-GNQ

Peer tips for implementing an Anaplan sales forecast

“Align on that process, and align on it globally…Your spreadsheets are all two dimensional. Anaplan is multidimensional. So take the time to think about the multidimensionality of it—it’s not recreating the rows and columns of your favorite spreadsheet. Use the power of Anaplan for better performance and better models and, quite frankly, better usability.”

Jeff Powrie, Director Deloitte Consulting LLP

https://youtu.be/RTxrjNTv0hs

See Anaplan’s sales forecasting in action

“There are certain business processes that are actually hard to hold in a transactional system, and so you wind up doing it in the spreadsheet. But as you run more and more of your business off of them, you start to realize that spreadsheets are not going to scale.”

Brett Butler, Business Architect, WW Sales & Service Team Lexmark