Analysis
There are several underlying issues that require analysis. To begin, the Sales Budget is based on past year’s sales. This does not account for any potential changes in demand (ortrends), economic environment, competitor actions, weather, etc. The sales budget is the most important of all budgets because the accuracy of all other budgets depends heavily on it. Mr. Peterson said “… there was plenty of time in later years to refine the system bybringing in more formal sales forecasting techniques and concepts.” This type of procrastination will rarely position the firm for success and more importantly, useful budgeting and controlling data. A sales budgeting process should be implemented that is more specific and accounts for several aforementioned variables. One possibility is that they could assign weights based on management observation for the factors that affect sales - competition, market trends in demand, economic conditions, weather, etc. This should improve sales forecasting effectiveness. Budget revisions throughout the year should also be reserved for extreme circumstances. It causes confusion and is a symptom of poor sales budgeting processes. The current product mix also deserves attention. The three most popular flavors currentlyare vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Those three flavors also have the lowest standard margin. The more exotic flavors have a higher contribution margin. Boston Creamery should move towards more exotic flavors to increase profitability but also because the market is going to shift towards these flavors being favored. This trend can help them differentiate their offerings from flavors that are commodities (strawberry, chocolate, vanilla) to flavors that are unique to Boston Creamery. Differentiation is a key to maintaining market share, even more so given the trends to come. 1READ FULL DOCUMENT