Primary Use Case: Sales Forecasting & Target Management

Background Overview

Accurate sales forecasting and target management are important foundations for business decision-making. PowerX CRM combines opportunity stages, historical conversion, team plans, and actual performance to provide forecasting models and target breakdown tools. This primary use case focuses on "Sales Forecasting & Target Management."

Objectives & Value

• Target Breakdown: Decompose annual/quarterly targets to teams and individuals.
• Forecasting Model: Generate forecast curves based on opportunity stages and historical performance.
• Variance Alerts: Timely reminders to adjust strategies when forecasts deviate from actuals.
• Decision Support: Visualization dashboards help management make decisions.
• Collaborative Execution: Sales, customer success, and marketing share targets and progress.

Participating Roles

• Sales Leader: Sets targets and monitors execution.
• Sales Rep: Updates opportunity progress to achieve personal targets.
• Management: Reviews forecasts and adjusts resource allocation.
• Finance Team: Focuses on alignment between forecasts and revenue.
• System Agent: Calculates forecasts and pushes alerts.

Primary Scenario User Story

As a sales leader, I want real-time visibility into target attainment and forecast variance, so that I can adjust strategies to ensure performance achievement.

Sub-scenarios Detailed

Sub-scenario A: Target Setting & Breakdown

• Roles & Triggers: Sales leader sets quarterly targets; system breakdowns to teams and individuals.
• Main Process:
  1. Enter quarterly sales targets in target management module.
  2. Auto-breakdown to subordinate teams and individuals by region, team, and historical performance.
  3. Provide adjustment tools allowing manual fine-tuning with reason records.
  4. After publishing, sync to personal dashboards.
• Success Criteria: Reasonable target breakdown; smooth communication; clear responsibilities.
• Exception & Risk Control: Over/under alerts; adjustment requires approval; version traceability.
• Indicators: Target acceptance rate, adjustment count, publish timeliness.

Sub-scenario B: Forecast Curve Generation & Updates

• Roles & Triggers: Agent auto-generates forecast curves based on opportunity stages and historical conversion rates.
• Main Process:
  1. Calculate opportunity amounts by stage; combine with historical conversion rates to generate forecasts.
  2. Provide optimistic, baseline, and conservative forecast scenarios.
  3. Daily update curves and push to management.
  4. Support drill-down to view contributing opportunity lists.
• Success Criteria: High forecast accuracy; timely updates; explainable data.
• Exception & Risk Control: Auto-exclude anomalous opportunities; model self-check; manual calibration records.
• Indicators: Forecast variance rate, update frequency, model hit rate.

Sub-scenario C: Variance Alerts & Action Recommendations

• Roles & Triggers: When forecast deviates from actual beyond threshold, system reminds to adjust strategies and suggests key accounts.
• Main Process:
  1. Compare forecast values with actual attainment rates; calculate variance.
  2. Trigger alerts when exceeding threshold; show influencing factors (stage stagnation, deal delays).
  3. System recommends opportunities or upsell customers for key follow-up.
  4. Sales leaders create action plans and record execution status.
• Success Criteria: Timely alerts; actionable recommendations; variance improvement.
• Exception & Risk Control: Configurable thresholds; ignorable false positives; action plan tracking.
• Indicators: Variance improvement rate, recommendation adoption rate, action completion rate.

Sub-scenario D: Management Dashboard & Decision Support

• Roles & Triggers: Management views attainment rates, funnel conversion, and average sales cycles in dashboard.
• Main Process:
  1. Dashboard displays target attainment, forecast trends, and key metrics.
  2. Support drill-down analysis by region, industry, and team.
  3. Provide hypothesis simulations (add headcount, adjust discount strategies).
  4. Output recommendation reports for weekly and quarterly meetings.
• Success Criteria: Real-time data; comprehensive analysis; decision support.
• Exception & Risk Control: Data permission control; anomaly filtering; simulation results tagged with assumptions.
• Indicators: Dashboard usage rate, decision response time, metric accuracy rate.

Scenario-level Test Cases

Test Preparation: Enable target management, forecasting models, variance alerts, and management dashboards. Pre-configure annual targets, regional team data, historical opportunity conversion rates, and simulated actual performance.

Use Case A-1: Target Breakdown & Publishing (Positive)

• Preconditions: Quarterly target 30M; East China and South China teams exist.
• Steps:
  1. Set quarterly total target.
  2. View system-recommended breakdown and fine-tune.
• Expected Results:
  • System allocates based on historical data: East 18M, South 12M.
  • Managers can manually adjust with reason records.
  • After publishing, team member dashboards show personal targets.

Use Case B-1: Forecast Curve Generation (Positive)

• Preconditions: Opportunity stage data up-to-date; model configured with optimistic/baseline/conservative curves.
• Steps:
  1. Refresh forecast model.
  2. View forecast charts.
• Expected Results:
  • Three curves displayed simultaneously; click to view contributing opportunity list.
  • Model provides win probability, estimated amount, and expected close date.
  • Data supports CSV export.

Use Case C-1: Variance Alert (Positive)

• Preconditions: Actual attainment only 40%; forecast should be 60%; variance threshold 10%.
• Steps:
  1. Update actual performance.
  2. Check alert center.
• Expected Results:
  • System提示"actual 20% below forecast"; lists main causes (stage stagnation, key opportunity delays).
  • Recommends priority follow-up customer list.
  • Managers can generate action plans and track completion.

Use Case D-1: Management Dashboard Simulation (Positive)

• Preconditions: Dashboard has region and industry filters; supports hypothesis simulation.
• Steps:
  1. Select "add 2 sales reps" simulation in dashboard.
  2. View forecast changes.
• Expected Results:
  • Dashboard shows adjusted forecast values and impacted opportunity list post-simulation.
  • Generates strategy suggestions; can export for management meeting.
  • Operation logs record simulation parameters.

Use Case D-2: Permission-restricted View (Negative)

• Preconditions: Regular sales can only view personal targets.
• Steps:
  1. Attempt to view company-level forecast as sales.
• Expected Results:
  • System提示"no permission"; only shows personal attainment rate.
  • Administrators can see access attempts in audit log.

---

Related Resources

Business Domain: Analytics & Revenue Intelligence

• Customer Value & Churn Analysis - Value segmentation, churn alerts, and root cause analysis
• Performance & Incentive Settlement - Performance statistics, commission approval, and payout risk control

Other CRM Business Domains

• Customer Management - Customer lifecycle, segmentation, and lead management
• Marketing Automation - Lead nurturing, campaign orchestration, and conversion optimization
• Sales Process - Opportunity management, quoting, and sales activities
• Customer Success - Case management, service delivery, and renewal operations
• Membership & Loyalty - Member tiers, points, and engagement
• Admin & Integration - Access control, workflow automation, and system integration

---