Sales process improvement, sales pipeline reporting and revenue forecasting
Sales Pipe Insight is the result of many years of frustration that the founders of Visual Insight, experienced in previous businesses. The lack of a clear, effective and accurate method of assessing sales force effectiveness and the quality of the sales pipeline led to the development of a sophisticated methodology that has been refined in the real business environment. One that answers the questions that everyone struggles with using conventional sales reporting and sales forecasting tools.
These methods were found to be so effective that Visual Insight was formed to realise this intellectual property in a tangible form. The result is Sales Pipe Insight. Our understanding of the needs of investors, owners and board members has enabled us to create a practical solution that provides straightforward, no-nonsense information that enables businesses to drive profitable growth.
Over the last 20 years, the Founding Directors of Visual Insight have run 30 companies with turnover up to £250m in the UK, EU and US – within almost every one of those companies we have been frustrated at the quality of management reporting, particularly in regard to sales reporting and sales forecasting. So over the years, we developed a cure, and have launched our first product, Sales Pipe Insight for Salesforce – a sales pipeline reporting and forecasting tool that has been designed for the Board, by the Board. It has benefits throughout the organisation, but it is aimed specifically at the CEO, FD and Sales Director. If you have Salesforce, you've already made the right choice – but if you want maximum value, get Sales Pipe Insight.
James Anderson, CEO, Visual Insight
An extract from Swift, the IFT (Institute for Turnaround) magazine, 2009
Having trustable numbers is
written into the DNA of
turnaround. IFT Fellow John Lowry
explains how frustration at poor
sales forecasting in business led
him to a novel solution –
founding [Visual Insight].
A common theme has run
through my 25 years in large international
companies and my 18 years in business recovery –
poor quality sales reporting and forecasting. Even
with excellent sales force automation systems,
pipeline reporting to the Board is usually weak and
unintelligible, based on subjective or simplistic
percentage confidence factors, and undermined by
out-of-date or error-strewn data.
A survey recently showed 83% of directors don’t trust
sales forecasts and 72% apply an average discount
factor of 50% to them. But 53% of directors believe
they do not have the financial resources to survive a
10% shortfall in revenue for three consecutive
months.
Credible forecasting
Over 18 years in a number of turnarounds I have
crafted an approach to these issues that, in a two
page dashboard, gives the Board all the accurate
information it needs on sales prospects. In 2007
James Anderson developed an expert system to
produce the predictions for the dashboard. That
expert system is the subject of a patent application.
By applying initially expected, and as time goes by
actual historical, win/loss ratios, delay factors and
value erosion factors to the value of business in each
of the qualifying, selling and closing phases and by
assessing the completeness of the sales process in
each of those phases Sales Pipe Insight makes predictions of
bookings that have been shown to be accurate.
Comparing the results to quarterly targets one can
determine potential shortfall for as much as a year
ahead and therefore decide at macro level which of
the only four things possible the company must do.
That is to run campaigns to put more opportunities in
the qualifying phase, to push opportunities through
the sales phase faster, to stop value erosion and
improve win/loss ratios in each phase. It also, of
course, highlights potential cash flow problems.
Data Quality indicators
SPI derives its reports using data extracted
automatically from Salesforce.com and provides clear
data quality indicators. Consequentially, review of the
dashboard by the Board very quickly indicates whether
the Sales Director is insisting on quality information
from his sales people and is in touch with what is
going on. The system provides for the Sales Director to
give his comparative view of the potential as a result of
his detailed, subjective knowledge of situations.
We have shown SPI to Banks, Big 4, Private Equity
and M&A companies and all have expressed interest;
Banks for cash forecasting and debt risk assessment;
M&A for pipeline valuation; Big 4 for business process
improvement. Two PE companies directed invested
companies to use it and an IFT member has adopted it
in one of his companies. We formed Visual Insight in
2008 to offer the resulting Web based Software as a
Service (SaaS) – Sales Pipe Insight. The
company sells business intelligence software and our
research leads us to believe it has a breakthrough,
sales performance management, pipeline reporting and
analytics and sales prediction solution.
Innovation in a recession
Companies are struggling more than ever with their sales process
management and forecasting, and we offer a product
that is helping them manage through difficult
times.