The Business Problem:

Inaccurate Forecasting and Lack of Agility

Drake, a provider of custom-built food processing machines, faced a critical challenge in accurately forecasting customer demand to ensure that the right teams and resources were in place to meet project deadlines.

Historically, their approach involved determining sales forecasts, expenses, and hiring needs only once a year during the annual budgeting process. They relied on spreadsheets to predict orders, but this method lacked accuracy and left them unprepared for the complexities of each project. As a result, the Drake team struggled to allocate engineering resources effectively and often couldn't give HR enough lead time to hire the necessary staff.

While a CRM system seemed like a potential solution, it wouldn't address their core issue: with low-volume but high-complexity sales, they needed a way to regularly track and update the status of each individual sale. What they truly needed was a system for ongoing discussions and updates, allowing them to predict close dates more accurately and align resources in real-time.

How Rhythm Helped:

Empowered by Metrics and Prepared for Successful Delivery 

Rhythm coaches helped the Drake team establish and regularly review leading indicator KPIs—metrics that help a business predict future outcomes. These KPIs gave them key insights into their customers’ activities so that they could reliably forecast when orders would close.

Drake followed Rhythm best practices for their weekly meetings, honing in on KPIs that weren’t performing as expected. This allowed them to foresee and discuss irregularities that could impact anticipated customer order time. They started to request resources and additional staff with more appropriate lead time, putting less strain on their engineering and HR teams.

The Results:

Greater Accuracy, Efficiency, and Workforce Stability

By implementing their new system, Drake was able to streamline resource allocation and more effectively manage customer demand. This gave the team greater confidence in their ability to meet deadlines without the stress of last-minute adjustments.

As Executive Vice President and COO George Reed noted, the improvements also helped stabilize their workforce. With fewer scrambling efforts and better staffing for each order, employees are now more engaged and less likely to leave, contributing to a more consistent team.

With Rhythm’s partnership, Drake has experienced:

• 4x increase in confidence for forecasting close dates.
• 50% reduction in margin of error.
• 25% increase in lead time for hiring.