Tag Archives: Sales & Operations Planning

Power Your Planning: Steelwedge Demo at Your Desk

Posted on by
Reply

Got 30 minutes? Spend it with us on March 20, at 12:00 noon EDT, for the Steelwedge Demo at Your Desk. We invite you to take a peek inside the cloud to see how sales and operations technology can drive meaningful scale, speed and performance for your global planning initiatives.

Steelwedge executives EJ Tavella and Roger Singh will host the live, interactive demonstration and open discussion, during which you’ll see the solution that companies such as Jaguar Land Rover, Lenovo, PZ Cussons and MetroPCS are using to power their planning and decision-making process.

Demo at Your DeskDuring the Demo at Your Desk, you’ll learn how the Steelwedge cloud-based planning technology can help you:

  • Improve your demand forecasting
  • Increase visibility
  • Reduce your inventory
  • Improve your margin
  • Model “what-if” alternatives

As business volatility has risen, increasing numbers of enterprise leaders have been driven to look at planning software to increase their agility—being able to quickly make the right decisions to navigate changes in demand and supply. Last year, a study of manufacturing business leaders showed that nearly 90 percent saw business agility as a key company imperative. Yet less than one third of them felt their organization was set up for agility. This agility gap is driving a huge interest in S&OP.

An interesting point: almost all of the leaders surveyed in the aforementioned study were using S&OP process—but only about 20 percent were powering that process with technology.

But S&OP technology adoption is on the rise. Industry leaders across discrete and process manufacturing sectors including high tech, consumer tech, industrials, chemical, agribusiness and CPG are increasingly seeking out technology solutions to supercharge their S&OP processes. Gartner’s recent market report on S&OP technology shows that this market is growing faster than any other segment of the supply chain industry.

Further, cloud-based solutions are driving the fastest adoption…and Steelwedge is seen by Gartner as the leading global provider of cloud-based integrated business planning solutions. The reason why is clear: Steelwedge technology unites your critical supply, demand and finance teams with all the data in whatever system each group has—all in one platform for faster collaboration and decision-making.

Don’t miss the opportunity to learn more during the Steelwedge Demo at Your Desk on March 20, at 12:00 noon EDT. Register here!

Candy Dish S&OP

Posted on by
Reply

Candy S&OPThere are certain stock images associated with Valentine’s Day: flowers, hand holding, heart-shaped everything, especially candies. Every sweet manufacturer seems to have its own Valentine twist on its product.

Candy: it’s such an unassuming piece of sugary happiness, and one thing we’ve added to our headquarters office front desk is a whole dish full of it. There’s a pretty big selection of candies in the dish, from mini chocolate bars to hard fruit-flavored candies, soft chews, mints, et al. The office has consumers in the form of employees and visitors to the office who enjoy all the different types of candy available, with the chocolate being, perhaps not surprisingly, the favorite among them.

It occurs to me that there’s a mini S&OP process arising that keeps the candy dish bringing joy to the office. First there’s the tracking of which candies and candy types disappear the fastest, how much of which type to order so as not to take up too much valuable stocking space or to hold onto any type of candy too long. There’s the process of changing out the candy types every few days to keep the dish interesting to our consumers while ensuring the new and untried types are going to actually be eaten and not lie ignored in the bowl. What suppliers are going to deliver the types of candy we want with the best balance of availability, speed of delivery, and cost to us? Where do we get a candy we want in event that one of our suppliers runs out?

For our suppliers, where did they get their candy? How many wholesalers did they work with to bring us variety, and how many manufacturers did the wholesalers work with? How many other manufacturers did each of those manufacturers deal with to get each ingredient for their candies, and how many raw material suppliers did they work with to get things like corn for making corn syrup, cacao and milk for making chocolate, seeds for making dyes, or sugar cane for refining sugar?

How much S&OP did each of these companies use for their own products? What happens if just one link in the chain is broken at any given time—how would the chain persist on its course with the least disruption, and how much would they have to inflate final costs to keep production going?

Talk about big data.

How many hands did all this go through, how much planning was involved, and how many hours of work were put in just so we have our bowl of sugary happiness at work?

S&OP and supply chain management touch our everyday lives, every day, often with not too much thought on the consumers’ end except that they’re enjoying their favorite types of candy. It’s a gentle reminder that good S&OP is like good manners: when done right, its presence goes largely unrecognized, but its absence is certainly noticed.

S&OP Beyond the Basics: Q&A Part 2

Posted on by
Reply

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 executive meeting, ask each person present to rate the meeting on a scale of 10 and give 50 –or fewer– words why, finishing with the leader of the business. Those people will tell you where to improve and where not to.

Q. What is the best approach to organize promotional activities in the forecast process?

Within the 5-Step Process of S&OP, Step 2 is Demand Planning; this includes the addition of promotions and related activities by people from organizations like Marketing, Sales Promotion, and Merchandising. The promotions are added to the forecast early, well in advance of the consensus forecast going to Step 3, Supply Planning.

Q. What are the main pitfalls if you are in an S&OP process implementation?

The primary pitfall, much greater than all others, is to fail to educate the people in S&OP. Note the use of the word “educate” rather than “train.” That’s deliberate: training tells people how to run the software; education addresses how to run the business using this new tool.

Please write to us at info@steelwedge.com should you have any questions or need elucidation on any of the concepts mentioned in this blog.

Have a Happy New Year!

S&OP Beyond the Basics: Q&A Part 1

Posted on by
Reply

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 requirements?

The Steelwedge S&OP platform has the ability to model both a standard bill of material as well as a statistical bill of material (attach rates).  As part of the Rough Cut Capacity Planning process, the consensus demand forecast at a finished goods level is converted into material requirements at a component level for the purpose of performing a build-versus-buy decision using the sourcing template. In cases of configured products,  the dependent as well as independent demand associated with components is computed as part of this process.

Q: S&OP is limited to quantitative views of supply and demand. How do you validate qualitative assumptions about external factors?

Steelwedge estimates that only about 50% of the decision making at S&OP meetings is based on quantitative factors – the rest of the decisions are made based on tribal knowledge or ‘gut’ feel. It is important to capture these decision factors as part of the process so that the validity of these assumptions can be tracked later. It is expected that over a period of time these assumptions are re-evaluated and quantitative approaches are incorporated instead. We understand that collaborative planning and S&OP is never going to be completely fact based and that the solution should support the ability of the end users to make informed decisions based on data as well as qualitative factors.

Q: How do we get end users more engaged in the process. What kind of reports / alerts are commonly presented at S&OP meetings?

Excel continues to be the most commonly used business planning tool. That is why Steelwedge provides a platform that utilizes Enterprise Enabled Excel, which powers the S&OP process on top of the Excel application. A familiar paradigm is one way to get end users more engaged in the process.

Another common problem that sales reps face as part of S&OP process is that they are asked to input data into very complex Demand Planning applications, resulting in loss of interest and use.  Also,  sales people are often completely mobile and don’t have the internet bandwidth to provide inputs into these Demand Planning applications.  Steelwedge addresses this two ways:

a) One Click Planning provides an event driven push based mechanism to alert sales executives of areas that require their input. When the users click on an email that they receive from the application, they are taken directly to a template that they can fill out for products that they have access to.

b) Offline tools – this allows sales reps to input data without being connected to the internet. Once they log into the internet, they can do a net change submit to the server to sync up the data.

Combating Complexity: Are You Agile Enough?

Posted on by
Reply

As the world grapples this month with the ripples from Europe’s debt crisis, the political turmoil in the Middle East, and the flooding in Asia, companies can’t ignore the imperative to plan for all those scenarios they’d never want to plan for. But have you?

What used to be an annual spreadsheet event is no longer an option for global businesses that have to navigate and course correct for the daily onslaught of economic, political and environmental events that could derail the best laid plans.

Supply chain complexity is multiplying as businesses become more global and interconnected. To remain competitive, organizations are changing how they source , sell and develop products. The rate of product obsolescence in consumer electronics market alone puts business agility to the test. Add to that the disruption and risk that is part of the volatile global marketplace, and business leaders recognize that the “new normal” is likely nothing like last year…or even last month. Agility is imperative; and it is keeping business leaders up at night.

Next week, On December 7th, I look forward to leading a discussion at the Supply Chain and Logistics Summit in Dallas in a workshop I will be presenting there: “S&OP: Enabling Agility and Flexibility in a Global Organization.” Sales and Operations Planning is the ammunition companies require today to combat complexity, respond to market events faster and manage risks. In this session, we will look at how companies need to create an S&OP plan, ensure that it is executed well so that the desired business performance is obtained to gain profits. In other words, S&OP is not only about the strategy but also about how the strategy can be executed.

I hope to see you in Dallas at my session or at the Steelwedge booth ,#9, to understand how you are addressing business agility in your organization. But even if you can’t be in Dallas, we’d like to hear from you on what agility issues keep you up at night.