Forecast, Plan, Win: Automated Real-Time Sales Planning
Digital Automotive
Sales next level for automotive suppliers who want to grow profitably. Far beyond any CRM!
Boosting Transparency, Efficiency, and Effectiveness of Your Sales Strategy
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INTRO
Why Automated Sales Planning in Real-Time?
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In today’s fast-changing automotive industry, relying on static sales forecasts and manual processes is no longer enough. Market dynamics, customer demands, and production schedules change rapidly, making real-time insights essential for staying competitive.
Automated sales planning ensures that every aspect of the sales process—from forecasting and pricing to market analysis and execution—is continuously updated and accurate in the most efficient way. Real-time data allows automotive suppliers to react instantly to market shifts, reduce manual workload, and drive better decisions with full transparency.
This whitepaper explores how automation-powered real-time sales planning can:
“When I started my career in automotive supplier sales 25 years ago, we did our sales planning in Excel and created nice PowerPoint presentations. The process took weeks, which meant we only did it once a year. Surprisingly, many suppliers still work the same way today.” Erik Reiter
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INTEGRATIONS
1. Seamless Integrations: Volumes and Prices Always Up-To-Date
A key prerequisite for efficient sales planning is the seamless integration of external and internal data. The particular challenge is to eliminate system breaks in projects from the different life cycle phases:
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Seamless data integration ensures sales planning is based on a single source of truth. Disconnected systems cause data silos, misaligned forecasts, and decision-making delays. Digital Automotive’s platform integrates internal and external data, eliminating manual data handling while enabling real-time updates.
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(1) S&P Global Mobility data for the planned volume figures
Automotive suppliers access global vehicle and engine volume forecasts, SOP/EOP timelines, and production locations. Data updates continuously, ensuring precise planning.
Example: If a major OEM updates its launch schedule for a new vehicle model, the system reflects these changes automatically, ensuring the supplier’s production forecasts are always up-to-date.
Custom Market Insights: In addition to S&P market data, suppliers can override forecasts with proprietary customer-specific insights to improve forecast accuracy. Of course, a planner must be able to make his own assumptions if there is better market knowledge, e.g. through direct customer information.
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(2) SAP (ERP) Actual quantities and call-offs
Current actual quantities from the ERP system are automatically incorporated into sales planning. They serve as the basis for reliable forecasts. The use of actual quantities for automated forecasts is an enormous labour saving, especially for products that have several variants with take rates.
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(3) Prices directly from the Sales Management
The price lists from Sales Management are transferred directly to Sales Planning. This is the biggest source of error in Sales Planning. Prices for projects that are in the strategy, acquisition or development phase (not yet in SAP) are often incorrect or out of date and are entered carelessly into huge Excel files. The price forecast for series business, which is influenced by agreed price reductions (LTA/LTC) or technical changes, is also rarely mapped correctly. The solution: the sales planners receive the current price list, including all future changes, automatically for their sales planning directly from the system. And always with the current status, and therefore in real time. An enormous gain for efficiency and data quality.?
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MARKET ANALYSIS
2. Automated Market Analysis Directly from S&P Global Mobility Data
Manual market analysis can be slow and prone to human error. Digital Automotive automates market analysis, transforming complex data into actionable insights. Real-time reporting powered by S&P Global Mobility data helps suppliers quickly adjust their strategies based on shifting market conditions.
Market analysis reports are crucial for strategic decisions. Excel pivots or elaborate Power BIs that only a few people use are a thing of the past:
(1) Market growth
Market growth reports based on S&P Global Mobility data can be generated automatically. This is the basis on which each user can then select their individual perspective on the automotive market. With user-friendly filters for regions, customers (OEMs), locations, vehicle classes, BEV, ICE etc.?
Example: A battery supplier can track BEV adoption trends in major markets and adjust its global production capacity based on projected demand.
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(2) ?Portfolio development
A standard report that every automotive supplier wants to see: how the OEM or regional portfolio will develop over the next few years. Easily available for everyone without any effort.
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(3) SOP-Countdowns
Which vehicles from which OEM will be launched in 3 years? Where else can I place my products? This is also a standard report that is available without any effort and provides inspiration for future growth.
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(4) Lifecycle Overviews
Monitor vehicle lifecycles from launch (SOP) to end-of-production (EOP), ensuring long-term project sustainability.
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(5) Market shares - calculated automatically
Market share tracking reveals competitive positioning in the automotive market. However, manual calculations are time-consuming and often inaccurate.?
Market share calculations are performed automatically on the basis of the booked and strategic projects and the S&P Global Mobility data in Digital Automotive. And the visualization also works automatically. ?And if you want to track your competition, this is easily done in Digital Automotive.
Example: If a competitor secures a OEM project from a RfQ, the system automatically adjusts market share calculations after just one click, helping suppliers reevaluate their sales strategy.?
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Important to know:?Only Tailored Market Insights Deliver Results
Every automotive supplier is unique, with different priorities and insights derived from S&P data. A truly effective system must be configurable, displaying only the parameters relevant to each supplier’s needs. Individual configuration of the S&P Global Mobility data and forecasts ensures that suppliers can focus on the insights that matter most to their business.
Example: An engine supplier may require details about the battery capacity of a specific carline to make informed strategic decisions.?
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STRATEGIC TARGETS
3. Intelligent Project Proposals and Efficient Set-Up?
Digital Automotive’s intelligent project proposal feature leverages real-time data to suggest the most promising projects, ensuring efficient capacity utilization and optimal market expansion.
Setting up strategic projects should be seamless, standardized, and efficient. With Digital Automotive’s automated integration of S&P Global Mobility data, suppliers benefit from a standardized project set-up process that minimizes manual effort while ensuring accuracy. Automation ensures real-time updates, effortless project definitions, and consistent volume forecasts, providing a reliable foundation for strategic decision-making.
(1) Preselection of Target Vehicles and Engines based on Critical Parameters
Potential target vehicles or engines in which you can place your products are suggested directly. This is particularly helpful if too few target projects have been defined for certain SOP years and the plants are at risk of under-utilisation.?Digital Automotive provides intelligent preselection of target projects by analyzing critical parameters such as:
? SOP schedules
? Volume forecasts
Bookmark your preselected vehicles, to use this information when defining your strategic targets:
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Example: An engine component supplier facing declining orders in its primary product line can use the system to identify EV-related projects with similar production timelines. This enables the supplier to fill capacity gaps while diversifying its portfolio for long-term growth.
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(2) Automated Target Proposals for?100% Utilized Plants?
To ensure full utilization of production plants, Digital Automotive continuously monitors plant capacity and suggests vehicle or engine projects to fill unused production slots. This is particularly helpful when too few target projects have been defined for certain SOP years, putting plant utilization at risk.?
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(3) Link Your Projects to S&P Global Mobility Data
Linking S&P data (based on your preselection) with just one click:
The benefits you gain:
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(4) Extra feature for Sales Planning Pros: Automatic repair of S&P Global Mobility project links
Sales planning experts who work intensively with S&P Global Mobility data know the problem: the built links break if, for example, the program code changes. The result: the S&P volume figures are no longer updated in some systems, in others the turnover even disappears completely. The solution: A system that automatically repairs broken links. If this is not technically possible, the system should suggest replacements that the user can insert with a single click.
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(5) Flexible Project Set-Up With or Without S&P Links
Enjoy the flexibility to set up projects without an initial S&P link, allowing you to focus on core planning first. If needed, you can easily add market data later or expand your project scope by including additional vehicles and engines. This ensures your projects remain adaptable and aligned with evolving requirements.
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VOLUME PLANNING
4. Efficient Volume Management
By automating volume management, companies can work more efficiently and always have access to up-to-date data. A basic requirement for real-time sales planning:
(1) Vehicle and engine volumes: Intelligent use of S&P Global Mobility data
The automated import of S&P Global Mobility data described above represents a real efficiency gain. It becomes perfect when the sales planner can decide project by project for which projects the updates should be used automatically and where not. If these are to be the basis for volume ?planning everywhere, the volume planning is already done. And with every update of the S&P figures, a new forecast is created fully automatically.
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(2) Volume Planning Flexibility:?Project and Part Level
Volume planning must adapt throughout the product lifecycle:
...this is just the recommendation. But of course, a truly flexible system should allow you to decide, project by project, whether to work at the project level or switch to the part level whenever needed.
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(3) Comparison of plan, actual, S&P, budget, and contracted volumes
A volume planning system should take into account the different perspectives in order to recognize deviations and draw the right conclusions for planning. ?This includes the automated transfer of contractually agreed quantities from acquisition, the one-click definition of budget quantities and the comparison of your own planning with the S&P quantities.
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领英推荐
(4) The part number level: Intelligent take-rate conversion
Sales planners who have to deal with take-rates are familiar with the problem: converting take-rates to part quantities and vice versa, including a derivation to the vehicle quantity using defined reference parts. The description alone shows the complexity that sales planners have to contend with here. A system that solves this problem means real time savings.
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(5) Use of actual quantities for the forecast
For projects that are in series production, forecasting individual variants can involve a lot of effort. A system that automatically uses actual quantities for forecasting enables correct forecasts in real time without effort. The option to intervene manually in the event of unusual changes must of course always be possible.
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PRICE PLANNING
5. Automated Price Input From Sales Management
Effective price management is the cornerstone of successful sales planning. From seamless integration of sales management price lists to detailed planning for future price developments, Digital Automotive provides the tools you need to manage pricing with precision and flexibility. Tailor your pricing approach project by project, ensuring accurate, up-to-date data across all phases of your sales strategy.
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(1) Use the input from your sales management price lists seamlessly integrated into your sales planning?
Use input from your sales management price lists seamlessly integrated into your sales planning. Prices are automatically synchronized in real-time from ERP and Sales Management systems, ensuring accuracy and consistency throughout the project lifecycle. This eliminates manual data transfers and ensures that your planning reflects the latest pricing agreements, adjustments, and conditions.
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(2) Plan future price developments with maximum comfort
Prices can fluctuate due to multiple reasons:
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A state-of-the art sales planning solution has to give you the flexibility to plan for all these incidents. Ideally from a centralized table where you can adjust indexes or currencies for all your selected projects with just one click.
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(3) Define your price granularity, project by project
With Digital Automotive, you can tailor the level of granularity for each project based on your planning needs. If you prefer high-level planning, you can work solely at the project level without delving into part details. Alternatively, for more detailed planning, you can include part numbers with part prices, along with all essential sub-elements such as base prices, raw material weights and indices, logistics costs, and more. The choice should always be yours, ensuring flexibility and precision for every project.
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Example:?
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REPORTING AND ANALYTICS
6. Sales Planning Reports in Real-Time
Automated reports visualize your strategic planning in real-time. Reports that are available at any time in real-time create the necessary transparency to make the right decisions. It's brilliant when these are created completely automatically and sales can be visualized in all dimensions (customer, region, product, business unit, plant, etc.) with just one click.
(1) Growth reports
How strongly is your own company growing? And how does the latest information on volumes, prices and orders won affect sales development?
The answer is found in the always up-to-date growth report.?
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(2) Portfolio reports
Your sales portfolio can be seen in all important dimensions:
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(3) Strategic Target Reports
?The strategic targets are automatically visualized, allowing you to view your goals with just one click.
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(4) Advanced reporting features for insightful analytics
For insightful analytics the following tools you need:?
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SALES PLANNING SCENARIOS
7. Budget and Scenario Planning
Scenario creation and presentation can be very time-consuming. Automating processes is therefore a real necessity:
(1) Scenario and budget creation
10% less in China or 5% more volume at BMW globally. How do these assumptions affect our sales development? A simple system that adjusts all affected projects in a simulation with just a few inputs is a huge leap in efficiency when creating scenarios. Budgets (the special form of scenarios) can also be created with a single click.?
Price adjustments allow to simulate the future, with what happens if the price increase or decrease. It is all possible ?to define new strategic target projects.
Example: An automotive supplier wants to replace the BMW 3series with the 5series in his strategic plan and simulate the impact, if they win the other carline.?
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?(2)?Plan/Actual comparisons?
The classic in business analysis: plan/actual comparisons. The budget values saved with one click are compared with the actual values in an automatically generated report.
The actual values are fed from the ERP (SAP) quantities, the current price information from Sales Management and the latest information from the orders won. This is all information that is already available from the respective processes. The trick is to link the data in a deeply integrated system in such a way that automated reports are generated from it.?
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(3) Scenario visualizations including deviation analysis
Sales reports for scenarios are created completely automatically. The visualization and comparison of different scenarios with each other or with the latest planning status is available at any time without the need for manual effort.
Side-by-Side Comparisons: Evaluate various scenarios, comparing best-case, worst-case, and realistic business models.
The most important management question "Why?" is answered with just one click: See the root-cause of any deviation.
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BEYOND SALES PLANNING
8. Real-Time Sales Planning for Claim Management
Sales planning goes beyond acquisition and forecasting—it includes claim management when customers fail to meet contractual obligations. Manual claim management often results in delayed resolutions, missed reimbursements, and lost revenue.
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Digital Automotive automates claim management by integrating live project data, ensuring complete visibility into contract deviations. Suppliers can trigger claims based on automated alerts when production volumes or delivery schedules fall outside agreed terms.
(1) Volume Risk Alerts
The actual and forecast volume data from your sales planning can directly be used to detect deviations from the contracts. See deviations from the contractual agreements with always up-to-date data.
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(2) Data-Backed Claims and Negotiations
Contractual Proof: Use historical performance data and real-time project updates to build strong claims cases.
Seamless Documentation: Automatically generate comprehensive claims reports for faster customer negotiations.
Volume Forecasts from S&P Global Mobility: “The future will be great” is the standard response from buyers during volume claim negotiations. To counter this effectively with a solid and credible foundation, S&P volume forecasts is available to support you precisely when you need it during negotiations.
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(3) Automated Claims Management
Claim Triggers: Automatically create claims when terms and agreements are violated.
Financial Impact Analysis: Evaluate financial losses and recommend corrective actions, including compensation demands.
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Example: If an OEM orders 20% fewer components than agreed, the platform automatically triggers a claim, calculates the financial impact, and generates a claim file ready for submission.
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Sales Planning Execution
9. From Strategy to Delivery
A well-designed sales plan only adds value if properly executed. Sales planning should seamlessly connect to operational execution to ensure that businesses can deliver on their promises.
(1) Transparency on strategic targets - Focus of the entire organization
Transparent sales planning is the foundation for aligning organizational efforts and driving success. By providing clear strategic targets, deadlines, and operational goals, it ensures that sales teams, calculation departments, production managers, and other departments work collaboratively toward shared objectives.
Digital Automotive bridges the gap between planning and execution by integrating real-time forecasts with operational targets and performance monitoring. This transparency enables decision-makers to track progress, identify potential bottlenecks, and make adjustments in real-time. Actionable, achievable, and aligned with market realities, these plans ensure that the entire organization remains focused and unified in achieving its strategic objectives.
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(2) Acquisition Calendar for Resource Planning
Efficient resource planning begins with a well-structured acquisition calendar. Digital Automotive provides a dynamic acquisition calendar that outlines key milestones, RFQ deadlines, and project timelines. This tool allows suppliers to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that teams have the capacity to manage multiple projects simultaneously.
By visualizing acquisition activities over time, the calendar helps organizations avoid resource bottlenecks and prioritize high-impact opportunities. Whether it’s assigning the right personnel to critical tasks or ensuring timely responses to RFQs, the acquisition calendar ensures seamless coordination across departments.
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(3) Top KPI: Strategic Hit-Rate
One of the most critical key performance indicators (KPIs) in automotive supplier sales is the Strategic Hit-Rate—the percentage of targeted business successfully secured. High-performing organizations achieve Strategic Hit-Rates of 70-80%, while the industry average often lags behind.
Digital Automotive enhances Strategic Hit-Rate performance by:
A high Strategic Hit-Rate not only drives profitability but also strengthens long-term customer relationships, positioning suppliers for sustained success.