This situation is a continuation of the situation presented in the Chapter 4 Role-Play. Go back and read that Role-Play and your notes from it to refamiliarize yourself with the scenario.

Agnes, Alan, and Penny have now had their meeting and have proposed a new sales force organization scheme for Blue Tern Mills postacquisition of the Hello line of healthy grain products. It is now time to begin the process of developing a sales forecast for the first year of operation of the combined companies. In order to begin this process, Agnes calls another meeting of the three for a few weeks later.

In advance of the meeting, she asks that each person come prepared with a set of notes listing their proposed combination of forecasting methods to employ along with their rationale for why each should be a part of the final approach to determining this firstyear forecast. As you prepare these notes, keep in mind that especially this first year the forecast will be tricky because it will be difficult to determine in advance the full impact of the transition of the Hello line from the manufacturer's representatives to Blue Tern’s own sales force, with the new organization scheme for it you developed earlier. Clearly, multiple methods of forecasting should be applied to reach a final forecasting decision and information will have to be effectively sourced and utilized from both firms.

The purpose of the meeting is to settle on methods to be employed in developing the first-year forecast, justify those methods, and list information needed and the sources of that information.

Characters in the Role-Play Agnes Klondyke, Chief Sales Officer (CSO) for Blue Tern Mills Alan Knorr, West Coast sales manager for Blue Tern Mills Penny Pugsley, currently the director of sales for Hello Healthy Grain Foods and soon to be East Coast sales manager for Blue Tern Mills (note that Penny's job at Hello has been to supervise its network of manufacturer's representatives—Hello does not have its own sales force).

Assignment Break into groups of three, with one student playing each character. It doesn’t matter what the actual gender mix of your group is. Before you stage the meeting among Agnes, Alan, and Penny, work separately to come up with the information required: your ideas for methods to be employed in developing the first-year forecast, justification of why those methods, information that will be needed to drive your selected methods, and the sources of that information.

Then get together and role-play the meeting. Share your ideas, especially discussing the pros and cons of different forecasting approaches proposed. After the discussion, come to agreement among yourselves on what will be the best mix of forecasting approaches, given the unique situation in the first year after the acquisition, and specify the needed information and sources. Note that you are not developing a forecast in the meeting—you are simply deciding on what approaches to be used, why, and what information is needed.