Sales Forecasting and Product Desription? 1

[GordieB]

I am very new to GP and have an accounting background and not an IT background. I have recently started at a new company. So, apologies to all if this is very simple.
Recently I have been asked to make sure we can produce a sales forecast for our schedulers and production planners based on not only confirmed sales but potential sales.
The marketing/sales department tried briefly, when our company began using GP, to use the Sales module in order to do their forecasting. However common complaints were that GP was not flexible enough to change specifications on product if necessary. They also did not like that they had to search by item number rather than item description.
The other challenge is to restrict access to the dollar value of this overall sales forecast to Executives only. They would like to show only quantity and not dollar value to the schedulers and marketing department.
I have a very strong IT department here to use as a resource but, like every other place, they are extremely busy and understaffed for our needs.
1. Is GP flexible enough to change product specifications within the sales module as customer demand requires?
2. If forecasting is possible, will it update immediately as the sales departments enters sales orders?
3. Can GP distinguish in forecasting between confirmed and potential orders?
4. Can someone tell me the option, sort, range and report type to use to create a monthly sales forecast? Our manuals do not cover that. At lease the ones the that I have access to.
5. Can we add another field in the Sales order system to include Item Description along with Item Number and Short Description?
6. Is it possible to restrict dollar value access to very few users and still grant access to quantity information to many users?

Thanks in advance for all your help.

 

[jazgeek]

1. are your products made by you or are they straight buy parts from somewhere else? If they are bought, I'd look at the product configurator available from horizons

http://www.hzs.com

(keep in mind that the description field is changeable on the sales order level without changing the item card. In our environement we use a catchall part called * for quotation purposes and change the description to reflect what the customer is requiring. This does not address forecasting though.

2. Forecasting is not part of GP Third party addons would be required.

3. again as in 2, third party programming would be required

4. see 2 and 3

5. yes, vba or dex programming is required.

6. yes, vba or dex programming is required.



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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[GordieB]

Thanks for the help JazGeek.

In response to #1, we manufacture our own parts. Many of the parts have multiple variations, base product plus add ons.

Can you recommend a flexible yet stable sales forecasting add on program (or a few options if you are not familiar with the capabilities of some programs and I can research them)? Will it be able to integrate with GP?

 

[jazgeek]

yes, there are forecasting modules out there third party. Going to the great plains site and checking by industry solution will reveal a few. However, the manufacturing portion of it causes a disconnect. The only one that I know of that includes both forecasting and manufacturing (configurator too) is GreatPlains manufacturing.


We've decided to scrap the distribution series in Great Plains in favor of an external integrated manufacturing package (crm/forecasting/configurator etc)GP manufacturing was just too cumbersome for our needs and limited in area's outside of the manufacturing realm. We decided on an application that was open to modification tailoring to our business model.

there are several out there including:

made to manage
max from kewill
seradex (our choice)


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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[GordieB]

Thanks again for the help.
When you say the "Great Plains Website" - do you mean the microsoft business solutions website or is there another one?
I tried to search for others but was not too successful.

 

[jazgeek]

the one on microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/gp/default.mspx

go into customersource (you'll need your passport setup properly for this-someone at your site will have this info)

here's what it says though if you can't get in


Microsoft Business Solutions-Great Plains


Sales Forecasting
Last Modified 11/6/2005
Posted 2/6/2003


Download



GP Sales Forecasting
File Size: 72 KB Word 2002 file
Published: 2/6/03
Version: 7.0



With Sales Forecasting, sales managers can review prior years' sales and quickly revise projections based on their knowledge of customer needs.


Whenever you bring together people to accomplish a task, communication challenges may arise-especially when those people have different objectives and backgrounds. Your sales teams and manufacturing managers probably face these challenges-yet effective communication between these divergent groups is the first step to ensuring product delivery that's both efficient and effective.

Sales Forecasting brings these two teams closer together. With Sales Forecasting, sales managers can review prior years' sales and quickly revise projections based on their knowledge of customer needs. Forecasts can be easily changed, reflecting an upward or downward sales trend, and they can be tweaked to account for seasonal influences or promotional activities.

From these forecasts, a Master Production Schedule (MPS) can be easily created and reviewed by the manufacturing managers, eliminating any tedious rekeying of information. From this MPS, Manufacturing Orders are easily created, again without rekeying information.

As new events arise that affect the demand for production resources, new sales forecasts can be created from the old. Managers can maintain an unlimited number of forecasts, making it easier for them to gauge the impact of a variety of economic or environmental forces on production. With Sales Forecasting, both sales and manufacturing managers can anticipate and prepare for virtually any outcome.



Key Features:


Forecasted sales numbers can be entered and manipulated using an easy-to-use spreadsheet-like window.
Historical sales values can be filtered by salespersons and/or customers to form the basis for forecasted sales amounts
The flexible plan-oriented structure allows for definition of multiple sales forecast plans simultaneously.
Different sales forecast plans can be easily combined into one master plan.
The forecasting periods are user-defined per plan and the period options range from daily to yearly.
Any sales plan can be "activated" to become the basis for master production scheduling.
Forecast Consumption leverages the Sales Forecasting and Material Requirements Planning components to enable sales demand to be reflected in material requirements plans. That is, you can create different sales forecasts, and when you regenerate MRP information, these forecasts along with current sales orders can be taken into consideration.
Sales Forecasting also requires the Bill of Materials and Manufacturing Order Processing modules to operate.





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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz

 

[GordieB]

A couple more questions relating to the sales forecasting module. We are going to try to make it work apparently.
1. Is it possible to remove to dollar amounts from the sales forecasting module as all forecasts that I produce have the extended price of goods forecasted? This is the information we wanted to restrict to executives only.
2. When producing sales forecast reports many zero items were printed. For example if it is a weekly forecast and we are not producing Product X a zero is printed. This tends to make the reports cumbersome and makes them difficult to utilize for the purpose that they are designed for. Is there an option in the sales forecasting module to remove these zeroes from the reports?

 

[jazgeek]

anything is possible. You may find creating a crystal report to be a more flexible method of reporting. But I'm sure you can supress a line based on zero qty in report writer just as easily.

As for removing the $ from the screens, I don't see a problem a little coding couldn't handle. Coding is out of my realm though, your local var would be able to handle that more readily.



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and they wonder why they call it Great Pains!

jaz