Overview
Sales planning can be used to manage the sales plan, which AGR uses to calculate purchase orders. The Sales Plan comes prepopulated with the statistical forecast, which AGR automatically calculates using the sales history. Make use of the statistical forecast to make proportional adjustments, or enter a new plan to override the existing forecast.
Alternatively, the sales history can be adjusted in AGR which affects the statistical forecast, which is useful for smoothing out unusual sale spikes or dips.
Planning can be done on the SKU level, or higher levels, such as on Item Group level. Any high-level input will cascade proportionally down to the items below.
Example
AGR cascades all changes to the sales plan down proportionally. If the sales plan of the item group named Accessories is overridden from 10,000 units to 12,000 units, each unit will receive a 20% increase in its sales plan.
Set up your own planning view
Setting up your personal planning view is an important step to take before planning. The data view should fit the planning horizon and planning level. This includes setting the period filter to display your planning horizon, adding in the right set of columns to set the planning level, and group the data by the appropriate time bucket (day, week or month). The article on working in plans will give you more information on customising your planning view.
Keep in mind
AGR will never override user's inputs to the sales plan, even when statistical forecasts are recalculated. Keep that in mind when entering values far into the future, as AGR will eventually base order calculations on those plans.
AGR comes with a set of standard views, and each view comes pre-set with a set of relevant columns, data series, and period filters. These views can be used as templates for creating customised planning views by amending and then saving them as a new view.
Sales Plan Rolling 12m displays the plan on the item level with a 12-month rolling planning horizon.
Sales Plan Rolling 8w displays the plan on the item level with an 8-week rolling planning horizon.
Sales Histories Last 36m displays the sales history used as input to the automatic statistical forecasts from the last 36 months.
Sales Histories Last 104w displays the sales history used as input to the automatic statistical forecasts from the last 104 weeks.
Example use cases
Create a periodic sales and operations planning (S&OP) process
Each user is responsible for periodically reviewing the sales plan for a set number of items.
Examples:
Category managers review sales plans for items in their respective categories weekly or monthly, and make the necessary adjustments.
Sales people review the sales plan for the items based on information not available to AGR, such as conversations with customers.
Plan upcoming promotions
When there is an upcoming event that is likely to temporarily spike an item's sales, make use of the sales plan to increase the demand during the period so that AGR will replenish stock accordingly.
Phase in new items
New items, by nature, do not have a sufficient sales history to produce an accurate statistical forecast. A manual sales plan can be put in place to drive the order calculations until sufficient sales exist for the statistical forecasts to take over demand forecasting. Alternatively, you can use Connected Items to have the new item inherit the sales history of an older item. Read more about managing new items in our best practices article.
Phase out items
You can adjust the sales plans to reflect the decreasing sales of items that are still being sold and replenished, but will be phased out eventually.
If items are not actively being replenished, consider closing them for purchasing in your ERP. If you know that an item will not sell after a certain date, consider using the Forecast end date setting in the Item card details to eliminate the statistical forecast for the item after the chosen date.