Common struggles for revenue leaders point to limited marketing technology use

Only 15% of revenue leaders are very satisfied with their forecasting process, according to a recent Benchmark Study by revenue intelligence provider InsightSquared. And even worse, a full 91% of respondents said their predicted forecast was off by 6% or more.

Certainly, the pandemic affected forecasts in a dramatic way, which is all the more reason to look hard at the kinds of tools companies can implement, as well as other steps they can take to improve forecasting.

CRMs. 80% of respondents were using two or more forecasting platforms, and over half were using three or more. CRMs are the top tool for forecasting automation. However, less than a third said they used CRMs for opportunity scoring, an important forecasting metric.

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Automation. Over half the companies surveyed didn’t have forecasting automation. This makes organizations more susceptible to human error and bad data when everything is manually inputted into an Excel spreadsheet.

Involving sales reps. Since they’re closest to the deals, sales reps need to be brought into the forecasting process. But only a quarter of businesses surveyed said this was the case in their org.

Why we care. When organizations use a number of different tools for a single operation, as in the case of forecasting platforms, this requires an even greater amount of human attention and buy-in. It’s easy to see how morale could be affected and how revenue opportunities could be lost. The consequences for siloed data and a bumpy digital transformation are many, not least of all dropped sales. It appears from this survey that those responsible for driving revenue (which increasingly includes marketers) need to have a thumb on the pulse of their company’s stack. The business’s forecasting could offer a sign that greater changes need to be made in marketing or sales.