You have to make sure you understand your future sales and make sure you have the right people. Sales managers need to track dozens of data points for each salesperson and product to make sales projections. There's a long supply chain of parts that need to be procured in order to manufacture the products. There's a lot of planning. Congress Communications of Farnham, England, will be MetrixPoint's beta customer.
Companies go from simple spreadsheets to more complex spreadsheets to automated systems.
Many companies try to build their own. Existing software packages tend to focus more on managing the sales force than on analyzing the data and making projections, he added. They include tools for those purposes, Arvin said, but he found them wanting because they don't account well for the multiple sales channels most enterprises use. Direct sales, partnerships, distribution agreements and other channels have their own dynamics that must be taken into account. Sales professionals are busy and may not accurately assess how many prospective customers they have.