#The challenge
Forecast discipline had degraded to the point where large deals could sit open indefinitely in the 'omitted' category with no activity and nobody accountable for closing them out — the forecast looked clean precisely because the ugly deals had somewhere to hide. Opportunity types had sprawled, stage progression was not tied to any qualification signal, and the company had turned off its attribution platform, leaving no way to see what outbound was producing. Marketing was tracking event follow-up by hand in spreadsheets.
#The approach
Forecast categories with actual definitions
Designed collaborative forecasting in Salesforce, surfaced inside the conversation-intelligence tool the team already worked in, with explicit written definitions for commit, best case, pipeline and omitted — so category choice becomes a claim a manager can challenge.
Validation rules with teeth behind 'omitted'
Added validation rules so stale deals cannot park in 'omitted' indefinitely: the category now requires the deal to be dispositioned rather than quietly left open.
Qualification-driven stage progression
Designed a contact-role qualification-scoring architecture so stage progression reflects who has actually been engaged in the buying group, rather than a rep's confidence.
Attribution rebuilt after the tool was retired
After the company switched off its attribution platform, built the attribution flow and CRM specification to close the outbound blind spot, then handed the build over to the in-house team with a demo and documentation.
Lifecycle simplification and a hygiene diagnosis
Kicked off opportunity-type simplification, a guided-path build and updated pipeline stages, and ran a data-hygiene review that identified account hierarchy — not duplicate records — as the underlying problem, then selected a hierarchy-management tool to fix the actual cause.
#Outcomes
Forecast discipline reset
Commit, best case, pipeline and omitted were given explicit definitions, backed by validation rules designed to eliminate the open-forever omitted pipeline, with contact-role qualification scoring driving stage progression.
Attribution rebuilt after the platform was switched off
The attribution build and CRM specification were completed to replace the retired platform and close the outbound-attribution gap, then handed to the in-house team.
Hierarchy identified as the real data problem
A hygiene review found account hierarchy, rather than duplicate records, was the underlying cause of reporting inconsistency — and a hierarchy-management tool was selected to fix it, instead of another dedupe pass that would not have helped.