Cognos solutions for sales

What is driving sales results?

Sales Results are one of the most important information sweet spots for better performance management. They provide a consistent overview of actual revenue across the components of the business: product, customer, territory, channel and time.

Sales Results is concerned with both short and long term. Beyond immediate operational analysis, such as a sudden drop in sales, this decision area lets you see broader performance patterns to determine if management objectives are on track. With consistent information flow over time, you can make more strategic comparisons and adjustments.

With the Sales Results decision area, you can set planning goals and scorecarding metrics for these elements:

• New customer sales ($).
• Sales growth (% and $).
• Sales order (# of units and $).

Most importantly, you can analyze these goals and metrics by a number of dimensions to find the hidden gems in the data that drive performance management:

• Industry.
• Customer location.
• Time (year, quarter, month, week).
• Market segment (macro & micro).
• Brand and product line.
• Sales territory and sales channel.

Using the Sales decision area

You set targets based on your goals and metrics in Sales Results. You monitor your success by looking at how you measure up against your targets. Further, you dive into your results to see what affects performance.

• New customer sales ($): If sales are flat in a premium customer segment, are resource investments needed to revive it?
• Sales growth (% and $): Are sales trending up in certain territories? Is this consistent across products, channels, sales reps and customers?
• Sales order (# of units and $): Are we maximizing revenue per unit in some sales territories over others?