Sometimes it’s the small features that excite people. In WinCenter v3.1, there is a small feature for Spreading Opportunity Revenue that is one of those rich and useful little features. Using this feature, the system will spread opportunity revenues over the period of performance which can be used for financial projections and planning. In this article, I’ll show you this feature.
Most capture/CRM systems will track a single Contract Value number. Some systems, like WinCenter, also will weight this value based upon the PWin (Probability of Win) for reporting purposes. WinCenter v3.1 goes one small step forward to also take care of spreading the potential opportunity revenue over the period of performance.
How it works?
When entering opportunities, to run the calculator you need just three pieces of information in the system: 1) Contract Value, 2) Period of Performance Start and 3) Period of Performance End. With those three pieces of information in the system. It is ready to do the spreading for you.
Below we show you the feature within an opportunity. You just click the Calculate Value button and it will spread it for you. You can set up the spreading for calendar or Fiscal Year. Below we are spreading the information based upon a 9/30 Fiscal Year.
A Useful Result
Now, the spread revenue is available real time in reports. Below is a simple report showing the revenue spread for opportunities in Post-Submittal and Proposal Development. Note that the report has grouped totals for opportunities based upon Phase of opportunity and Fiscal Year. Also, it is just one click to export the information to Excel.
Made Easy
The nice thing about this feature is that it is simple and easy. In addition, the information is always available real time. Further, by having a system feature to do the spreading vs. manual calculations it allows you to set up the feature to be consistent in how the data is calculated and displayed. It is possible for users to manually change specific values for unique situations. But, most customers just work with a single standard setup. Remember, opportunity management is not a precision game by any stretch. You are just trying to get a reasonable picture of the future if you win the business.