Enhancing Revenue Forecasting Capabilities
The Situation
A leading hardware and software communications provider to the media and entertainment industry was facing performance headwinds. Additionally, the Company was experiencing challenges with forecasting revenue as a result of an evolving operating environment, limited insight into revenue drivers, and recent management and organizational changes. The Company was set to kick off a full year reforecast process to provide an updated outlook to the Board of Directors and PE sponsor. The Company’s CFO engaged Accordion to enhance the revenue forecasting process through a data-driven analysis of historical performance trends and analytical validation of the Company’s quarterly reforecast.
Services
Budgeting & Forecasting Process Improvement
Stakeholder Reporting & KPI Development
FP&A Process Redesign and Implementation
The Execution
- Worked closely with the Company’s FP&A team, sales operations, and other relevant stakeholders.
- Conducted a deep-dive review of monthly revenue performance by business unit and product category, identifying variance ranges and areas for further examination.
- Aggregated a data set for analysis of underlying revenue cycle trends by business unit and product category, including:
- Composition analysis of historical sales pipeline and conversion metrics.
- Review of historical backlog, backlog roll, and burn-off metrics.
- Developed an analytical model – which was used to back test – by developing a revenue forecast for the two prior quarters and comparing against the Company’s previous quarterly revenue forecasts and actual results.
- Ensured the model-based back test indicated an upside/downside sensitivity range for actual revenue performance by business unit and product category.
- Rolled forward the analytical model with the latest pipeline and backlog data sets to derive a revenue forecast range for the upcoming two fiscal quarters.
- Used model derived forecast and resulting metrics to validate the Company’s quarterly revenue forecast submissions by business units and products.
- Transitioned the aggregated data sets and analytical forecast model to the Company’s FP&A team for use in ongoing reforecast cycles.
The Results
With Accordion’s assistance, the Company gained stronger visibility into revenue cycle trends and drivers. Our data-driven approach to the revenue forecast allowed the Company to objectively validate its bottom-up reforecast and identify areas of risk as they discussed their full-year outlook with the Board of Directors and PE sponsor. In addition, the FP&A team was able to utilize our analytical model in upcoming reforecast cycles.