A sales forecasting engine that replaced a chain of emailed spreadsheets

The situation

Forecasting ran on spreadsheets that travelled by email. Each region built its own, a central planner consolidated them, and by the time the consolidated version existed the regional ones had moved on. Nobody could say with confidence which number was current, and nobody could say at all who had changed a figure, when, or from what.

The variance against budget — the number the business actually manages by — was computed by hand, late, and only at the consolidated level. Disagreements about a forecast became disagreements about which file was authoritative.

What was built

A single planning grid: accounts down the side, product clusters and quarters across the top, editable in place by the people who own each line.

• Multi-quarter horizon per account and product cluster, all in one grid rather than one file per region.
• Cells editable directly by the owner of the line, with role-based access deciding who may edit what.
• Budget variance calculated live as figures change, and highlighted when a line moves outside tolerance.
• A complete audit trail: who changed which cell, when, and what the previous value was.
• Output feeding pricing and supply planning directly, instead of being re-keyed downstream.

Why the audit trail is the feature

The technically interesting part is the grid. The part that changed how the business runs is the audit trail. Once every change carries a name, a timestamp and a previous value, the monthly argument about whose number is right stops — not because people agree more, but because the question is now answerable in a few seconds.

What changed

One current version of the forecast, visible to everyone entitled to see it, with variance the CFO can read without waiting for a consolidation cycle. Planning rows: 4 732, live, in one place.

The systems and the numbers are real. The client is withheld here by default.