“
Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.
-Yogi Berra
”
Day One of Dreamforce had many of the elements we’ve come to expect, with star power, product announcements (Salesforce Genie! Slack Canvas!), and optimism about the future of work. Lenny Kravitz performed “Fly Away” for the crowd before Salesforce co-CEOs Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor took the stage and welcomed their fellow Trailblazers back to the City by the Bay.
While Marc covered some of the recent successes, he repeatedly mentioned that it’s “a new day” in many ways: for work, for public service, and for the entire Salesforce ecosystem. The forward-focused theme continued into the afternoon as forecasting emerged as one of the day’s hottest topics.
Some context: Despite the rapid growth in the speed, scalability, and availability of business tools, sales and revenue leaders continue to struggle to get forecasting right. Regardless of the technology used or where the data resides, one thing is certain— every great forecast starts with a great process.
So it’s no surprise that there was an overflow crowd (people standing several rows deep into the aisles) when Matt Wittlief, VP, Salesforce Practice at SpringML launched his session, “The Art and Science of Forecasting.” Matt wasted no time in clarifying why this subject matters: Forecasting enables business leaders to take the right actions to influence future bookings based on opportunity data and insights. The desired results include:
- Driving strategic actions and interventions to address quota gaps or revenue shortfalls
- Streamlining forecasting process based on CRM data (vs a mixture of CRM + offline data or spreadsheets)
- Automating with a high degree of alignment between opportunity management, pipeline management, and forecasting process
- Connecting with other key business functions such as Sales Strategy, Finance, and Operations
- Using historical CRM data and delivering highly accurate and individualized sales forecasts
Afterwards, many of the questions were tied to the recent launch of QuickStart for Revenue Intelligence from Salesforce, along with SpringML’s role as a preferred partner.
The schedule for Day Two includes a session from two more SpringML experts, so please join us at the Tableau Theater at 2:30PM for “Optimizing your Digital B2B Partnerships with 360 Analytics.”
