Improve Sales Forecasting With Version History

Data Visualizing

Tracking sales performance behavior is a complicated process. That’s because as leads and opportunities develop and solidify in the real world, the underlying data is constantly changing.

And while there are a wide variety of technologies built to monitor sales performance, most traditional platforms are often ill equipped to handle changes in data, leading to inconsistent reporting.

To meet the demands of constant change and provide sales teams with a greater degree of forecasting accuracy, organizations need to adopt tools that support version history.

Doing so will help them gain a significant competitive advantage.

What is version history?

Version history offers the ability to track changes over a period of time, as well as the ability to recreate those changes at a given point in time.

The process works something like the change-tracking feature in Microsoft Word. As you edit a Word document, you can see all the specific changes you and others have made.

track changes

A similar feature exists for sales forecasting technologies.

Version history allows you to trace every move a deal makes for unparalleled sales pipeline management.

Why do organizations need version history?

Measuring sales performance is easiest and most accurate when its progress is measured through a continuum of stages.

With version history, you have the ability to compute how long an opportunity was in a given stage.

Version history also allows you to monitor change analysis and view a detailed breakdown of pipeline changes between two points in time, allowing you to see the deltas in close dates, pricing and probability.

version history

What are the consequences of not having version history?

Many sales organizations suffer from “sandbagging.” This is when a sales rep reports a much lower deal opportunity than what actually exists, manipulating the sales process to artificially improve his or her attainment for a future sales period.

It’s not hard to see how this manipulation makes accurate forecasting next to impossible.

Without version history capabilities, sales leaders are unable to view pipeline changes over time and see if a sales rep enters data on an opportunity at a later stage.

This restricted view leaves organizations in the dark. Without an accurate understanding of your pipeline’s overall health, you can’t determine which specific changes brought you to this point.

Without a platform that features version history, you will not be able to measure the current state of your pipeline and determine what it will take to save deals that are on the bubble.

For more on the value of version history, download the PDF below. 

Data Versioning Capabilities in HD Forecast

Free White Paper: Data Versioning Capabilities in HD Forecast

This white paper presents an in-depth look into the benefits of using a platform that supports version history as a core feature.

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