PaceSMP helps companies identify and respond to evolving market opportunities.

In today's increasingly competitive market, it's essential for companies to effectively identify and respond to fleeting opportunities that emerge. Accurate sales forecasting is critical to aligning production, distribution, marketing and support with customer demand. Companies that fail to do so face having excess inventory or not enough. As well, sales forecasts need to be shared and incorporated into the functional planning processes across the enterprise. Only then can the business be optimally managed to focus on the customers, regions and products that drive maximum results.

Historically, companies have used multiple, disparate systems for sales planning. Systems used centrally at headquarters have been inflexible with rigid interfaces and have not been integrated with actual results. In the field, users have often not even had access to that, and have turned to disconnected spreadsheets. All of this has limited the ability to do detailed margin and profitability calculations - down to the customer and product level if needed. Responsiveness to changing market conditions and associated customer demand has been limited. Companies have also struggled with a lack of analytical capabilities to analyze actual results vs. forecast to a sufficient level of detail.

Pace Sales and Margin Planning (PaceSMP) addresses the sales planning and forecasting needs of organizations that sell products through various distribution channels or strategic customers. With it, the sales organization is able to develop a detailed sales and margin forecast through a combination of bottom-up detail, along with middle-out and top-down input of key business drivers. Pace's workflow capabilities allow sales management to review the forecast, making adjustments to achieve regional, channel or product line objectives. When finished, the forecast is then seamlessly integrated into the corporate planning process to ensure alignment and consensus between sales, operations, marketing and finance.

Thought Leadership

• Sophisticated, yet easy to use, business modeling capabilities to support development of plans at the desired level of detail
• Familiar Excel user interface
• Powerful calculation engine to permit real-time what-if changes and multidimensional constraint based modeling
• Scalable architecture to support large number of business users across a variety of business functions (sales, operations, management, etc.)
• Direct integration with operational applications and other planning applications
• Flexible application configuration to support unique business processes

PaceSMP provides a granular view of revenue, margin and profitability by business segment, improving sales forecast accuracy, while reducing time spent in the forecasting process. By addressing the sales and margin planning needs of a range of users from sales to finance to executive management, PaceSMP increases visibility and alignment across the organization, driving increased profitability.