Last week, I had the pleasure of listening in on a thought-provoking discussion led by Chris Turner, co-founder of StrataBridge Consulting on the S&OP Control Paradox. Chris dropped a series of compelling statistical breadcrumbs about the rapidly changing path for creating and operating a competitive global business. His numbers showed the aggregate impacts of natural disasters, oil prices, internal complexity and technology adoption on businesses of all kinds. But his main point wasn’t about WHAT is driving integrated business planning in global organizations: Chris urged the audience to take a hard look at HOW they were putting their planning to work.
Integrated Business Planning, which brings together strategic and operational planning into a single line of sight, got its start in the 1980’s as Sales & Operations Planning, with large companies looking to balance demand and supply planning for better organizational control. For business in that era, having a solid annual plan that controlled inventory, production and distribution from one view of demand made absolute sense. But in today’s world of changing customer demand, growing global supply chains with intricate interdependencies, and massive disruption, can we afford to “lock in” our planning at the cost of limiting growth?… Read the rest
This week, the Wall Street Journal pegged it: Global companies took years building supply chains. In 2011, natural disasters took just days to break them all apart. Like it or not, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) is the new normal, and more than ever before, time is the new currency.
Here’s what I mean by that: with the rapid outgrowth of linear supply chains into multi-enterprise networks, loss of control and visibility have become the top challenges for many supply chains. Proliferating risks in the demand-supply network and increasing lead-times due to expanding networks makes flexibility the key to overcoming challenges.
This was indeed a hot topic at the latest trade show I attended, Supply Chain Logistics 2011, where the theme was agility and flexibility. Leaders of supply chain strategies and leading global companies were on hand to discuss, debate and deliver ideas about how they—and the industry at large—can tap different approaches, such as Integrated Business Planning, to ensure they are more agile. It is imperative that they are able to beat the clock and deliver better returns to their companies in a world where VUCA reigns and no one has the luxury to sit out the storm and wait for smoother seas.… Read the rest
As we exit another wild, unpredictable year filled with economic, political and environmental upheaval—resulting in changes wrought of inspiration, desperation and perspiration, a virtual salute.
Indeed, as a global community there is much to be lauded, much to be learned and much to be leery from 2011. Cultural revolutions from the Middle East to Wall Street to Main Street; regional economic fissures, that have produced a global network of fiscal fault lines; and a heaping helping of Mother Nature’s wrath have both threatened and united us. It is the same in our industry, where finance, sales and operations teams are increasingly aligning to better recognize, respond and recalibrate to these same global dynamics. We are all learning the lessons of better alignment and agility in our ability to thrive.
Like it or not, VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), is our “new normal.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of one of my favorite books, The Black Swan, explores the idea that an event—positive or negative—that is deemed improbable, like the appearance of a Black Swan, can cause massive consequences.
I am inspired by what I’ve seen in 2011 from our customers, from our peers and from our Steelwedge team in approaching and resolving their own Black Swans.… Read the rest
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.… Read the rest
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.… Read the rest
