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How to use Scenario Planner

Joel
Updated

Purpose

This article aims to provide Outreach Users with information about best practices for using Scenario Planner.

Intended Audience

  • Outreach Users

How to Use Scenario Planner

With Scenario Planner, you can review and adjust the inputs that Outreach has used to simulate your current forecast projections to see how they may impact your results. It should be noted that the win rates reflected in Scenario Planner are calculated by looking at the deals that were in each stage or forecast category at this specific point in the sales period over the past 3 periods, and the average win rate of those deals. Scenario Planner will run with each set of inputs to provide a distribution of the bear case, bull case, and the most likely outcome.

  1. First, decide how you’d like to measure your pipeline: Weighted Pipeline by Stage or Weighted Pipeline by Forecast.
  2. Select the time period for which you would like to forecast.
  3. Select a specific user or team in the user rollup.
  4. Add optional filters based on picklist fields synced through your opportunity object
  5. Click Run.

Screenshot 2023-10-23 at 4.35.20 AM.png

Scenario Planner will leverage all data available and allow you to adjust assumptions and volatility with what you, as a leader, know to be true. This solution will allow you to model different outcomes and run thousands of scenarios in seconds.

Results

Outreach will run over 10,000 simulations based on your historical data over the past 12 months to show you your average win rates and how much variance your business may have. Variance is built into the simulation to display the most frequently occurring outcome or “Outreach’s baseline.”

Each scenario will be displayed in the “Results” graph and broken down by the following values. 

  • Fair Value is showing the most frequently occurring outcome. 
  • Bear Case indicates that more than 75% of the time, the forecast was above this value.
  • Bull Case indicates that this value or greater was achieved only 25% of the time.

Screenshot 2023-10-23 at 4.36.22 AM.png

Run Additional Scenarios

For each simulation, randomness is added to the inputs on the left based on their variance in historical values. 

  1. To run additional scenarios, click the purple “+” 
  2. Adjust one or more of your win rate or pipeline amount variables and click Run. 
    Screenshot 2023-10-23 at 4.37.54 AM.png

Running additional scenarios allows you to plan and adjust for that future timeframe.  For example, you may want to increase the Net new amount because you know a big marketing campaign is coming up that will bring in more pipeline next quarter.

This new scenario will be shown on the graph overlaid over the original scenario.  A detailed table view is also available that provides a description of the scenario inputs and corresponding simulation outcomes.

Definitions

  • Bear Case= Conservative forecast
  • Fair Value= Most likely forecast
  • Bull Case= Aggressive forecast

Scenario Planner in Preferred Currency

Once multi-currency feature is enabled for your org, you would see the currency dropdown on the top right as shown below. By default, user preferred currency will be selected.

Switching currency

In the currency dropdown, you would see the list of all the active currencies setup in your SFDC by the admin.

Let’s say you selected GBP, now all your values & graph will get converted to GBP as per the latest dated conversion rates defined in your SFDC.

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