Imports opportunity-level data from a CRM to produce a new business forecast

Description

This requirement involves a direct connection to a CRM tool that extracts opportunities including status, close date, chance of closing, and so on. These are brought into the planning products revenue model where it can be used for budgeting, forecasting, reporting and so on. These opportunities may include new business, upsells, renewals, and more.

Example Use Case

Scenario: A growing startup uses a CRM system to manage their new business opportunities. Their sales team regularly updates it and provides to finance. Finance moves the product into Excel where they produce a more detailed forecast.

Solution: By integrating the CRM data with the CPM software, opportunity-level data such as expected closure date, deal size, and probability of deal closure can be automatically used in forecasting. This uses real-time data to create an accurate new business forecast and inform strategic decision-making.

Considerations

This feature can automate a revenue forecast and enable finance to tie that forecast directly back to sales data. This is an alternative to simple dollar amounts for a forecast, or guesstimates on unit sales. Some systems will apply a weighted forecast based on likelihood to close * dollar amount. Many methods are available for this and will ultimately depend on the industry.

For B2B SaaS businesses that have a sales team, this functionality is essentially table stakes for producing a SaaS revenue model and forecast. Bringing in new business sales, renewals, upsells, downsells from the CRM, the SaaS business can have an up to date model that is always available for use by investors, product management, executives and more. The value of this functionality for strategic decision making is difficult to put a price on.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Integration Capability: How does your CPM software integrate with various CRM systems? Are there specific systems that it integrates more efficiently with?
• Data Import Functionality: How comprehensive is the data import functionality? Which fields are available to us?
• Checks and Balances: Are we able to curate the data before committing to the revenue forecast? Often, we will modify the close percentage, or give less weight to opportunities from certain sales teams.
• Updates: What happens when the CRM data is imported mid-month and is different from the beginning of the month? How does the system reconcile that?