Sales planning using SAP Analytics Cloud planning leverages its robust integration capabilities to provide a comprehensive view of commercial planning. This tool seamlessly incorporates inputs from sales, finance, marketing, and operations, offering a holistic approach to planning.
Commercial planning consists of three key components: marketing planning, sales planning, and portfolio planning. Sales planning focuses on revenue growth and trade promotion, working in tandem with marketing planning and portfolio planning, which includes pricing strategies.
The initial stage involves a high-level examination of the budget plan for both marketing and sales planning. This top-down approach allocates budgets for marketing based on major elements like countries or brand expenditures. For sales, it considers large global and regional components, such as major accounts or countries receiving sales budgets.
Integrated business planning plays a crucial role by incorporating the supply chain planning component. Integrated business planning seamlessly integrates into SAP Analytics Cloud planning, providing baseline demand data, which represents the expected demand level without marketing or sales investments.
Data from SAP S/4HANA, including financial actuals, pricing conditions, and product costing, is vital for understanding profitability, especially for consumer products companies with extensive stock keeping unit portfolios and various cost components.
The next step involves a bottom-up view of planning. In marketing, budgets are broken down to allocate spending for activities and campaigns. Similarly, sales budgets are allocated for specific activities.
Revenue planning combines the baseline demand from integrated business planning with the incremental revenue anticipated from marketing and sales campaigns and activities. This approach provides a clear view of expected revenue increases from sales and marketing efforts.
Portfolio planning, which incorporates pricing, is crucial due to recent economic volatility affecting price changes. Consider the impact of these changes on revenue alongside marketing and sales planning.
Exporting and outputs from this process involve projecting expected revenue from sales and marketing, factoring in pricing. This information is pushed into integrated business planning, not merely as an expected amount but as the commercial sales and marketing plan itself, serving as a driver within integrated business planning for forecasting analytics.
This data is also exported into the financial planning and analysis process. Sales and marketing commercial planning is a component the Chief Financial Officer considers in overall enterprise investments. Commercial spend, revenue, and list prices are incorporated into the financial review as part of financial planning and analysis.
The financial planning and analysis process is challenging in this industry due to differing perspectives among stakeholders on consensus revenue. Financial, sales and marketing, and operational viewpoints often diverge. The use of SAP Analytics Cloud planning by multiple departments ensures alignment and consensus.
This integrated approach to sales planning optimizes return on investment and enhances the execution of the sales process, ensuring effective collaboration across departments.