Sales Forecasting Best Practices and Their Impact on DRP and MRP Demand Planning

What is Sales Forecasting?
Sales forecasting means a lot of different things depending on who you talk to and the context of the discussion. Ask a sales person about forecasting and they immediately think of a sales forecast in terms of units and revenue in their customer relationship management or CRM business system.

Ask someone in accounting and they may think of sales forecasting in respect to budgets and how the sales forecast will support departmental budgets and overall corporate financial planning. But unfortunately, very few people ask supply chain planners what they need in respect to sales forecasting yet this has the greatest impact on the financial success of the organization.

This white paper discusses sales forecasting from a supply chain perspective. It provides an overview of sales forecasting strategies and best practices to help distributors and manufacturers to better manage their internal and external supply chains, production and distribution plans, and available resources.

We cover such aspects as:

• Sales Rep Forecasts
• Financial Forecasts
• Supply Chain Forecasts
• Statistical Forecasts
• Manual Forecasts
• Factors for DRP & MRP
• And Much More!