Sales & Operations Planning and Supply Chain Management

We work with clients throughout the supply chain, however have a particular passion and developed expertise in Sales & Operations Planning. The need for companies and trading partners to plan and make decisions in the best interest of the whole has never been greater.  We will work with your team at all levels to design and implement S&OP or to revitalize your existing process.

Supply Chain Planning & Execution

In addition to helping companies use S&OP to be the nexus of managing the business, our projects often involve work in the supporting planning processes, information technology application, as well as organizational adjustments or complete redesign as needed.  While S&OP is a great platform for continuous improvement, steering the ship, and generating sustainable business results, work is often required in the supporting processes to make S&OP and the business more effective.  Work here is often required to get the improvement dollars faster.

Our methods emphasize:

• Ownership with your team, not dependencies on consultants
• Quick impact, but use of techniques for sustainability
• Application of best practices that fit your business
• A layered system of Key Performance Indicators throughout S&OP and with linkages to higher level business objectives and lower level tactical execution
• Flexibility in approach to provide the level of service you want (e.g. training, coaching, assessment, and/or full implementation support)
• Business cases we quantify and achieve with your team
• Creating the level of momentum and visibility in the organization to make the project successful and the results sustainable or coaching behind the scenes if that is preferred
• Change Management

The organization must be effective to get the most from S&OP.

While structure is an integral part, building accountable leaders with a performance orientation is what will make the real difference. Over the years, the organizational elements of our projects have ranged from minor adjustments to fill a gap, to complete restructure of global organizations requiring a tightly facilitated process. 

Once a structure is aligned with the S&OP design and the underlying processes, we turn our attention to developing and coaching leaders to continually improve and drive results.

S&OP enabling technology may be required. 

Our first question is usually why your existing tools aren’t sufficient and we can help evaluate that, but when your tools don’t support business requirements, we can help with:

• Requirements Definition
• System Selection
• System Implementation

We have relationships with several of the software providers. The tools are becoming easier and more cost effective to implement and maintain. This is largely due to applications being hosted by the software provider as opposed to requiring hardware and support from your IT group. If new software is a fit for your business, we would partner with the selected software firm to integrate the system implementation with the process and change management work, as well as to provide overall project management as required. If your tools are not providing sufficient analysis capability or you struggle to assemble S&OP reports with accurate data, you are likely falling behind your competitors in this regard, and it may be worthwhile to take a look.

The expression of working on People, Process, and Technology may be overused, but the three elements are always there, and usually need to be addressed holistically.

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