The Sales Forecasting System (SFS) is a web-based business solution designed to assist Sales and Marketing personnel, within a manufacturing environment, produce accurate sales forecasts with ease.
The solution was designed to meet specific business objectives and user satisfaction. Integrating business rules, where required, to deliver a solution that produces the desired results that are used by business managers during decision-making events. The system may be easily modified to incorporate new and different business rules.
The key functional features offered by the solution are as follows:
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Security: Allowing only authorised personnel to access the system.
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Reliability: Producing automated and consistent results, whenever required by the user.
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User Friendliness: Designed to meet the business users’ requirements from both a design and functional perspective.
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Efficiency and Effectiveness: Efficiency and effectiveness in collecting data and delivering business results.
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Scalability: The system can be expanded to accommodate new and future business requirements.
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Integrated Solution: Communicates with JD Power Excel workbook through an integrated and automated import interface system.
The SFS was designed to assist the Sales & Marketing personnel maintain various product and manufacturing details. The system consists of 3 major functions as follows:
Data Collection
The system was designed to allow the user input data through two primary sources:
There are a number of maintenance pages available in the system through which the users may easily add and maintain related data. These maintenance pages are used for gathering data which is later utilized by the system to produce accurate forecasts and reports.
Multi-Currency
It is important to note that the system allows for multi-currency.Unit part prices are maintained in the system per month per year. These prices may be entered using different currencies. Multi-currency is managed by the system automatically, converting unit prices and total sales into the local defined currency,wherever required.
Data is stored in a collection of related tables defined in a relational database.
Processes
The two major processes managed by the system are:
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Import Process
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Calculate Sales Forecast
The import process allows users to import specific data as required by the business, from specifically formatted JD Power Excel workbooks. This data is imported and stored within the related database tables. The data imported may be reviewed and maintained through specific pages.
The import process has been designed to accommodate defined business rules which are triggered automatically during the process. These rules may be altered to accommodate different business rules and requirements.
The Calculate Sales Forecast process is the heart of the solution. Utilizing data maintained within the different pages, as well as several integrated core and complex business-specific rules, the process automatically calculates sales and volume forecasts for any defined 6-year period.
The generated forecasts may be exported to PDF or Excel format, or else reviewed within the application page.
Reports
The SFS incorporates an extensive set of customised reports that allows business users derive statistical data. Other reports may be integrated with the system. However it is important to note, that since data is being stored in a relational database, third-party querying tools may also be used for ad hoc querying and analysis. Furthermore, all generated reports may be exported in different formats (PDF, Excel and HTML).
Added Functionality
The system comprises of a number of added functionality that improve the user experience and makes the system more robust. An overview of the following items, considered as the major added functionality is detailed below:
- Highlighting
- Audit Trail
- Security
The system offers a highlighting functionality that allows users to easily and visually identify changes done to specific fields. The contents of these fields are displayed in red when modified. Highlighting may be reset by the user at any point in time either for specific pages which have highlighting enabled or else for all the pages that offer this functionality.
The Audit Trail has also been designed to allow users keep track of changes done to specific fields. Through the audit trail, users can easily identify changes done to the specific fields. Moreover they can identify: the user who performed the change; the timestamp of when the change was effected; the field that was changed; the original data as well as the data to which the specific field has been updated. The audit trail is maintained automatically by the system and may be viewed as a report.
The system has an integrated security module that ensures that only authorised users can access the system at any point in time. Through this module, the administrator user may create and maintain users, roles and privileges.
Administrator users are also allowed to assign privileges to defined roles and assign roles to system users.
Technical Overview
The SFS is a web-based solution, and thus may be accessed via a web browser. Microsoft Internet Explorer is the recommended browser. A typical architecture would entail a database management system to act as a data repository, a web server that will host the system files, the .Net Framework and Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).