Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas Keeps its Forecasting Sharp with Right90

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas, a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation, provides more than 28,000 different parts including LCD, optoelectronics, imager and IF/RF components to the world's leading manufacturers of consumer and business technologies.

Forecasting revenue is a hurdle in this highly competitive industry with rapid technology changes and short product lifecycles. Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas faced the added challenge of an immense and globally distributed sales organization with seven direct sales offices, 20 independent contracted sales rep firms and seven electronic component distribution partners contributing to its sales process.

Director of Strategic Business Operations Don LaVallee manages strategic business operations and IT for SMA. Don needed a system to maximize the company's opportunity to generate revenue. Using spreadsheets to collect and consolidate forecast data was labor intensive, took weeks to complete, was error-prone and did not link sales forecast data to potential effects on other departments.

Solution

Key reasons Right90 was the forecasting solution of choice for SMA include:

• Real-Time Forecast Access: Right90 gives SMA on-demand access to real-time forecast information and change.
• Cross-Functional Forecast Visibility: With Right90, SMA now has complete visibility into forecast changes, their causes and the effects on sales, marketing, finance, operations and supply chain. This helps align all contributing departments so each can execute on its portion of the revenue plan and sales has the support it needs to hit its number.
• Easy-to-Deploy and Easy-to-Use: Right90 met SMA's key requirements of ease of use, high availability and integration with Salesforce CRM. With its multiple user views and automatic, real-time updating, Right90 fit the bill for SMA and also provided the fast time-to-value the company required.

Results

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas saw immediate value from the implementation of Right90 and this value continues to grow. The ease of use that was a key factor in the software selection pays dividends in time savings for sales reps, management and IT support staff.

Right90 gives Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas visibility into all aspects of its forecast, including monthly price, quantity, and revenue by customer, product, channel and region.

Right90 automatically and instantly rolls up forecasts for all products across all accounts and channels. This provides the sales and marketing departments with a system that simplifies data collection and aggregation for management reporting and marketing supply chain planning.

Another key benefit of Right90 is the increased alignment enabled by cross-functional visibility into the forecast.

"We have better data now, and we're able to manage sales more effectively because we have more confidence in the forecast," LaVallee said.

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