About Sales Activities

Sales Activities are used in M3 DMP to label one or more changes made by a forecaster or administrator. This is a crucial concept in M3 DMP because it is not possible to create changes, unless they are attached to a sales activity.

Sales Activities are best understood as containers for changes that can be retrieved and modified in later forecast cycles.

Sales Activities created in earlier forecast cycles are included in the creator's forecast package. From the sales activity list, the forecaster can retrieve and edit the sales activity.

These edit functions are available for sales activities:

• Adjust the content of a sales activity
• Move a sales activity
• Scale a sales activity
• Delete a sales activity

Changes made in the pivot sheet must be labeled as a sales activity and are attached to a dataset. The advantages of selecting one change label over the other is clarified below:

1. Attaching your changes as a sales activity is also completed as part of the change dialog box but you need to select this method.
2. Once you select to attach your changes to a scenario as a sales activity, you must specify a name for your sales activity and select a change category, for example, promotion. Select a To Do List item for your scenario part and specify a description of the changes in the sales activity.
3. You can also select an M3 reference, if available, and select an activity status. For example, activated or ended.
4. The information you have included with your Sales Activity is then used by the Sales Activity List functionality.
5. You can get an overview of all sales activities, which are listed by shared characteristics, for example, name, dataset, and whether you need to accept or delete sales activities. The functionality also provides for a number of actions you can take on the sales activities.
6. As administrator, you can accept or reject a sales activity. Once rejected, the sales activity is no longer valid and must be resubmitted and accepted to be valid.
7. You can move a sales activity from start date to another. This means that you can easily move a promotion's start date.
8. You can scale the value of a sales activity to change the values in the affected cells in the pivot sheet. You can delete a sales activity, which removes it permanently from the scenario, or you can choose to delete a sales activity history to make the changes part of the scenario. You also have easy access to the changes in the pivot sheet.