Looking for a smarter way to set sales goals?

From the moment the company's financial and strategic plans are determined, the sales department can start its budget process at the start of the year.

This process mostly starts by receiving a simple spreadsheet and aims to further allocate top-down growth rate assumptions to a lower level of the organization. From experience, I know this can be a very complex, time-consuming and manual procedure ending up in situations where multiple versions of spreadsheets are circling around from sales analytics to sales management and back.

With the use of Anaplan, this whole Sales Budget Process happens in a much faster environment. Autonomous spreadsheets, such as Excel, are no longer considered as the main tool in the process. High level budget data and any bottom-up input by account are simply imported into Anaplan’s dashboards (UX page) by the end user, the Anaplan’s model (created upfront by the company’s model builder) automatically completes further rollout. The Anaplan platform centralizes this entire range of input coming from different stakeholders.

Also, the possibility of adding comments on dashboards makes sure the usual and time-consuming yearly discussion regarding growth % weight distribution between regions happens on the spot while everyone can follow up on any discussion.

Altogether, Anaplan speeds up the process between high level budget announcement and final approval of the Sales Budget on account level drastically and eventually leaves extra space for the core business of the sales department, delivering sales.