As part of our commitment to drive engaging dialogue in the industry around the best and ‘next’ practices, Steelwedge recently teamed up with Sales & Operations Planning expert Tom Wallace to host a webinar. ‘Taking S&OP to the Next Level’ is based on the new book, Sales and Operations Planning: Beyond the Basics. You can watch a recording of the webinar here if you missed the live event. Given that S&OP is a top priority for companies to tackle volatility, the Steelwedge webinar drew a huge attendance and just as many questions! Due to time constraints, our experts couldn’t answer all of them.

In this blog post, Tom Wallace answers some key questions from his perspective.

Q. Is S&OP ideal for large organizations which have their own manufacturing, inventory & products? Is S&OP applicable to a service company?

Yes to both. Some of the most successful users of S&OP are large organizations with manufacturing, inventory and product: BASF, the largest chemical company in the world; Procter & Gamble, the largest consumer packaged goods company; and Staples, a very large on-line retailer. S&OP has been shown to work well in organizations that don’t make physical products as well: banks, central engineering staffs, IT departments and the like.

Q. Should the same forecast drive both manufacturing and profit and loss?

Absolutely. The forecast, once authorized, becomes the one and only one statement of future demand. Only with this can you achieve a “one-number process,” which means running the business internally with one set of numbers.

Q. How do you balance continuous improvement to the S&OP process against over-engineering the process?

Listen to the people actually using the process, including senior management. The best way I know to drive continuous improvement is, at the end of each…

Two weeks ago, more than 800 people registered for a terrific conversation with industry pundit and author, Tom Wallace.  We simply ran out of time to answer all the questions live, so have captured common themes and answered them here. This is the first of a two-part series.

Q: How do you best manage the proliferation of S&OP meetings? People inherently object to having meetings for meetings sake!

It is important to differentiate between meeting and working sessions. Executive S&OP meetings are intended to be very efficient and structured, given the CXO level participants. These meetings should have a very specific agenda with clearly defined goals for the meeting.

Working sessions are more of a combination of structured agenda as well as unstructured time to discuss collaboratively on various topics. Demand review and supply review meetings are examples of these working sessions.

From a technology perspective, the solution should provide the ability to document business context, assumptions, action items and opportunities for further follow-up and tracking.

Q: How do you handle “what if” analysis & scenario analysis within Steelwedge?

Steelwedge provides a platform that balances supply, demand and finance and enables the end-to-end S&OP process. Scenario management and what-if analysis can be implemented at any stage of this process: demand forecasting, supply planning or executive S&OP. For example, as part of the out of the box application called Compass Express that is implemented by this platform, 26 scenarios can be created as part of the Executive S&OP process. These scenarios can be compared based on pre-defined metrics and the best scenario can be ‘promoted’ to be the plan of record for the organization.

Q: How do you do the Bill of Material explosion and how is SW exploding the confirmed demand plan to material…

Steelwedge recently hosted a webinar with Nari Viswanathan, Vice President of Solutions Marketing on the topic ‘Seven Keys to Integrated Business Planning Success.’ The webinar held on October 13^th witnessed a huge turnout. There were several questions asked during the session which we would like to summarize and make available for you here:

Q. If Sales is more focused on opportunity conversion, who should build sales forecast and revenue plan? Is that Finance?

A. Sales should definitely focus on building the sales forecast based on opportunity conversion. Finance should focus on building the revenue plan.

In the near-term, Sales should be able to leverage the opportunity pipeline as a somewhat rationalized basis for the sales forecast. Beyond the opportunity pipeline horizon another basis for sales forecast is needed. Depending on accuracy this can take the form of the marketing forecast, the demand plan or in some cases the stat forecast. This also applies to industries that are not opportunity driven. Whatever the basis, it’s important Sales participates in building the sales forecast and has an ownership interest in it. There is no better way to bake the ‘field’ perspective into the forecast.

To reiterate the point expressed in the webinar, S&OP/IBP should really start at the first stage of the order lifecycle. This will bring greater engagement from the sales team.

Q. You mentioned integrating the Third Party Logistics providers into the S&OP process, could you please share with us an example of this and the benefits achieved?

A. An example of this is industries such as apparel which involve a short life cycle in terms of fashion changes or season changes but also involve offshore manufacturing which results in long lead-times. In-transit inventory plays a critical role in these industries because if the demand for products in the short…

In continuation of our series of introductions of our new management hires, this week we spoke with Senior Vice President of Global Services, Lisa Betlem, to help you get to know her better.

Lisa has over twenty years of executive experience scaling services organizations for supply chain software companies.  Previously, Lisa ran the global services organization for ModelN, Navis, Savi, and Extricity.  Lisa has also worked as a Senior Production & Materials Planner and as a Senior Manufacturing Engineer at Harris RF Communications where she helped drive their Sale and Operations Planning process. Lisa holds an MBA in Supply Chain Management from the Rochester Institute of Technology (where she completed her Master’s Thesis on “Demand Planning”) and a Bachelor’s Degree in Manufacturing Engineering.  She and her husband reside in the hills above Silicon Valley where she serves as a volunteer Firefighter and Emergency Medic.

Q. Why did you choose to join Steelwedge?

Lisa: Supply chain, S&OP and IBP run through my blood and have been in my DNA for 30 years.  Both my Bachelors degree (Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering with minor in Operations Research) and Masters thesis were all around Demand Planning and Demand and Supply matching.  The first 10 years of my career were in manufacturing playing all types of roles that are significantly impacted by how well a company understands and executes integrated business planning.  I have personally experienced poor planning as both a vendor and supplier and wanted to join Steelwedge, the leader in the market, in order to help solve this critical global issue.

Q.  What business problems are customers solving everyday with the help of Steelwedge’s process consulting and technology?

Lisa: Our services and products are helping customers on many fronts.  We offer business process definition and IBP roadmap planning sessions for newcomers to S&OP to…