Cape-based finance budgeting and product development specialist idu Software aims to dominate the budget and forecasting software market with the release of idu-Concept 4.0, designed to eliminate the pitfalls inherent in the sales budget and forecast cycle.
Idu-Concept 4.0 builds on the successes of previous versions of the software, with a .NET architecture at its base to dramatically improve performance and implementation timeframes.
"The initial release of the software, which will be supplemented with additional modules in coming months, focuses on sales budgeting, using the idu-Concept sales module, previously idu Target, in the new framework," says idu MD Kevin Phillips.
"With the addition of this highly functional new module, idu-Concept caters for a full spectrum of both financial and now sales budgeting scenarios."
The sales budgeting and forecast process is traditionally a cumbersome process that involves the extensive circulation and consolidation of spreadsheets. Time constraints and the diverse, nomadic nature of many sales teams add to the frustration during budget and forecast cycles. Targets tend to be determined by the sales manager in isolation and are enforced on the sales team. Such targets are often unrealistic and result in minimal buy-in from the sales team.
"Idu-Concept 4.0 will revolutionise the sales budget process for organisations across all industry sectors. Unlike conventional sales or CRM packages that capture and maintain sales and customer information, idu-Concept Sales is geared specifically for salespeople, sales and product managers, allowing them to build sales forecasts from real data input from the sales team, who know the customers best."
The system provides managers with the ability to calculate profit by customer, region, product or salesperson, catering for almost any conceivable sales structure.
"Salespeople have little empathy with the budget process, so idu-Concept 4.0 has been designed to streamline the sales budget and forecast capture and reporting process by allowing the unit-based capture of sales budget and forecasts by customer, by product, by sales representative in a Web-based environment," says Phillips.
The software presents the user with comparative actual values, comparative budget and forecast values to enable the preparation of accurate sales budgets by the individuals who will ultimately be responsible in achieving the sales targets set.
The accuracy of a sales target is one of the most important areas of the budget and forecasting process, as sales targets ultimately drive all other budgets and forecasts in the organisation. The real value of sales budgeting and forecasting is only realised once actual sales are brought to book and compared against budget or forecast.
Individual customer discount percentages, individual customer pricing, future pricing changes, multiple product and customer structures to facilitate different reporting views, user-defined screens, views and naming conventions are some of the increased functionality delivered by idu-Concept 4.0.
The sales variance reporting module provides a two-way interface between the budget and sales ledger systems. It builds on the advances achieved through idu-Concept`s sales browser interface, delivering an optional module to allow the reporting of daily, weekly and monthly sales information to managers via the Web. Red-lighting of adverse variances outside acceptable limits assists in delivering a drilldown tool enabling management to identify customers or product lines responsible for major variances.
"Idu-Concept 4.0 is the first of a new generation of products set to reinforce idu Software as the de facto leader in the budget and forecasting space in SA, designing tools to empower users to take ownership of budgets, forecasts and expense management for their cost centres," says Phillips.
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