Draft, not yet verified. Written from the typical scope of this role, not from records. Before publishing: correct anything that isn't what you actually did, replace each highlighted [number] with a figure you can defend in an interview (or a plain description of the change, never an estimate), then delete this note.
01 · The problemThe forecast was a meeting, not a dataset
Every week, managers rebuilt the forecast from rep spreadsheets and their own adjustments. Forecast categories in Salesforce weren't tied to stages, so “Commit” meant something different to every rep. Nothing recorded what was called, so by the end of the quarter nobody could check how close the week-one call had been.
Leadership got one number from sales, another from finance and a third from the board deck, and the weekly meeting started with reconciling them.
02 · What I builtA forecast the CRM records and scores
- Written definitions first. Commit, Best Case and Pipeline were defined against stages and agreed with sales leadership and finance before anything was built.
- Forecast categories mapped to stages in Salesforce, with overrides allowed but tracked, so a rep's judgment call was visible as a judgment call.
- A nightly snapshot of open opportunities (stage, amount, close date, category) into a history table, so the call on any day could be reconstructed.
- An executive forecast view in Power BI: call against quota, week-over-week changes, slipped deals and coverage by segment. Front-line managers got a CRM Analytics version inside Salesforce.
- Forecast accuracy measured at week one (
1 − |call − actual| ÷ actual), so the team could see whether its calls were getting better.
03 · StackWhat it ran on
| Layer | Tool | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| CRM | Salesforce | Stage-to-category mapping, validation rules, override tracking |
| Modeling | SQL | Snapshot history, call reconstruction, accuracy and slippage |
| Executive view | Power BI | Leadership and board-prep forecast pages |
| Manager view | CRM Analytics | In-Salesforce pipeline and deal inspection |
04 · What changedOutcome
- Weekly forecast prep went from [before, e.g. a day] to [after, e.g. an hour].
- The forecast view was used by [N managers / leaders] in [which meeting].
- Week-one forecast accuracy became a tracked number: [accuracy before → after, or describe].
- One number reached the board deck, tied back to the CRM.
Company data is not shown. The demo on this site uses the same approach on a simulated company: see the forecast view.