Drive Profitability Through Forecast Accuracy: A Thomson Case Study

Company: Thomson is a provider of solutions for the creation, management, delivery and access of video for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Thomson's clients are studios, broadcasters, content distributors (telco, satellite and cable operators) and an increasing range of professional users of video. Thomson delivers superior value to its customers through a combination of industry-leading technologies and services, enabling Thomson to offer differentiated and innovative solutions based on its broad portfolio of intellectual property.

The Challenge: When Thomson decided to deploy Salesforce to meet its CRM needs in its Grass Valley business group, it specified the need for a centralized solution to enable consistent bottoms-up forecasting. With many contributing business functions around the globe, and customer and market opportunities changing constantly, Thomson needed to ensure it had up-to-date, accurate sales forecasts. Further, these forecasts needed to be "bottoms-up" and incorporate all of the data from multiple sources inside and outside the business that affected performance, rather than a simply a "top-down" declaration of a revenue goal.

The Solution: Right90 was the right solution for Thomson’s Grass Valley business group for a number of reasons, including:

• Bottoms-up Forecasting Capability: Right90 provided Thomson's Grass Valley business group with a single, consolidated application to perform bottoms-up forecasting that encompasses data on opportunities, products, quantity and list price. The manufacturing team now gets more robust sales information to support demand.

• Off-the-shelf Solution Fully Integrated with Salesforce: Right90's seamless integration with Salesforce and Thomson’s configuration system gives Thomson's Grass Valley business group a single solution to meet its needs. The comprehensive solution has helped Thomson prevent the need for costly IT developments and the deployment of multiple applications.

• Intuitive Application: From the user's perspective, Right90 is not even a separate application because it integrates completely with Salesforce. In fact, sales account managers in Thomson’s Grass Valley business group who use the Right90 solution no longer need to input information into multiple systems. The application’s capabilities and intuitive look and feel take the pain out of forecasting.

The Results: Thomson’s Grass Valley business group uses Right90 to drive cross-department alignment and overall profitability. By consolidating multiple forecasts in one centralized application, Right90 makes sure that all of the business functions that are affected by sales forecasting have the visibility they need to react to change. With Right90, Thomson can minimize costs and maximize margins through more accurate bottoms-up forecasting.

Business Results include:

• Increased forecasting accuracy drives maximum profitability

• Visibility across worldwide sales, marketing, finance, and operations departments

• Better business agility for managing and reacting to constant changes in opportunities and market

"In a nutshell, the ability to forecast accurately is an absolute necessity for any company that wants to be profitable," says Stéphane Bourles, IT director for Grass Valley Business Group, Thomson. "Right90 is key for us because it helps us anticipate revenue for the coming months, so we can adjust our costs in response."