A question in the minds of many executives in companies running SAP ERP and/or SAP APO is what type of organization would benefit from a Sales and Operations Planning solution (S&OP) solution by a best-of-breed vendor.   Below are some guidelines that can help clients decide if they should also evaluate another vendor’s products before making a decision.

Before outlining the criteria, let’s define the scope of the S&OP solution to include demand planning, rough cut capacity planning, performance management, product life cycle planning and business-planning (revenue/margin). With that scope defined, a company with some the following attributes should also evaluate an S&OP solution from a best-of-breed vendor:

• Has the business need to go live with the solution within weeks rather than years.

• Needs the ability to analyze trade-offs and develop alternate planning scenarios to determine the best outcome

• Currently spends an inordinate amount of time compiling and massaging data into a usable format

• Uses a direct sales force and believes that the ability to transform high level, sales opportunities from their CRM system into detailed, unit-based forecasts will significantly improve the quality and relevance of the demand forecast.

• Has a complex product mix or configured products and needs attach rate forecasting capabilities.

• Wants to create a consensus demand plan by incorporating input from other organizational plans such as new product introduction plan, sales pipeline, finance forecast etc and some of that data exists in non SAP systems such as SFA systems, PLM systems and even ERP systems from other vendors in different divisions.

• Is looking for a secure, integrated solution for sales and operations planning across the enterprise.

• Operates in a changing environment and wants the ability to easily update and evolve their S&OP process (a straightforward mechanism for creating and updating business rules, time series, and attributes) as their business processes changes.

• Does most of their planning on Microsoft Excel today and expects adoption issues with planning systems that have web-based user interface rather than an Excel-based interface.

• Wants to extend the solution beyond the firewall to support collaboration with distributors and customers.

• Wants to simplify and streamline their planning process and is looking for a simple-to-use workflow based S&OP process that is driven by E-mail and leverages an Excel “front-end”

Steelwedge is uniquely positioned as the only dedicated Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) provide in the SAP Ecohub partnership ecosystem.  With standard connectors and process maps for SAP,  Steelwedge meets the urgent need for improved strategic decision making driven by a scalable S&OP process faced by SAP customers large and small face.

Author : Glen Margolis, Founder & CEO