Getting a Practical Perspective on S&OP

The purpose of the S&OP process is to set a realistic and profitable overall direction for a company. Sales and Operations Planning brings together all major operational departments—sales, marketing, inventory, procurement, manufacturing, and finance—to decide how best to manage company resources to profitably satisfy customer demand and pursue strategic initiatives, which may include new markets, new product introductions, acquisitions, and others.

While once the objective of S&OP was just to create a feasible plan that could be executed, today companies view sales and operations planning as a means to execute corporate strategy. A successful S&OP process aligns an organization strategically to execute tactically.

Often the biggest obstacles to S&OP excellence stem from complexity—it may be too difficult to gather data, there may be too many meetings, the process may be too hard to govern, and key data too difficult to analyze and report. Ultimately, the process may become too hard to execute. Leading supply chain teams have discovered that true S&OP success flows from practical thinking, guided by three principles: make it easy to implement, make it easy to execute, and make it easy to sustain.

By following an effective step-by-step S&OP methodology, implemented through an easy-to-use technology platform, companies should be able to achieve gamechanging benefits. This paper presents a practical fivestep approach to the tasks and analyses needed to drive outstanding S&OP results, and highlights how leading supply chain organizations use powerful collaborative software solutions to implement a sustainable process.