Sales and operations planning

And you mentioned as well that you work, you manage both RGM and IBP, like IBP, which in other companies is more or less called SNOP, something similar.

Sales and Operations Planning.

SNOP is portable.

part of ibp okay so yeah there's there's two two sides to it um and i support ibp from the sales perspective but yeah um ibp connects from what does rgm do when you think of the ultimate goal it's to make better faster decisions ibp connects that into future business planning So what can we do in terms of opportunity and risk management in the future plan and looking forward at what we need to do to either close gaps or drive more growth or be more strategic in our future planning.

How do processes work today? Most businesses, office of the CFO is planning the financial reality, marketing commerce organization is planning the commercial reality including prices, pricing and promotions, supply chain is planning capacity, they're designing networks, they're thinking about, you know, where inventory's gonna be, procurement is planning their, their use of capital.

And then on a monthly basis, we have this thing called S&OP where we all come together, sit in a room, and try and figure out how to reconcile all of those disparate plans.

I was talking with a prospect just the other week and he said, "Look, we do it monthly 'cause we're stuck.

We don't have the data to do it faster than that, but the reality is we can't wait a month to make decisions in supply chain, in commerce, in, in finance, and as a result, we're always firefighting on a monthly basis to get these plans to stitch back together in a meaningful way." Our belief is that we need technological advances and process and people advances to shift orientation towards a system of alignment where businesses are working collaboratively on a more real-time basis to make these decisions smarter, not just faster, because those legacy processes and systems are frankly not keeping up with the level of uncertainty that's going on in the market today.

Where those monthly plans may have worked 10 years ago, they're broken the moment you print them today.

Yeah, and, and just to reinforce that, I've talked to a number of, uh, companies as well, and y- you get this notion that the, the rate of change today, the developments that hit various industry supply chains is so rapid right now that, you know, that S&OP process on a monthly basis, you know, it gets obsolete in a, in a few days' time because another development occurred or a, a subsequent development occur- occurred or, you know, somebody didn't meet the plan or there was an interruption in a shipment.

So it's a big problem right now and I, I, and I think, you know, you hit it right on the, the nail on that one.

Couldn't agree more.

How do you work with the different push and pull things from each side and getting people on the same page to make those decisions that are really complicated?

Yeah, so there has been a big movement over the last few years that I'm a very big fan of in developing either what they'll call SNOP, Sales and Operations Planning, or SIOP, Sales Inventory and Operations Planning, which is a real great collaborative effort between all of the different departments to help align those and solve these as a unit rather than as a dictatorial decision, which does unfortunately happen.

Finance will say, this is our inventory level, end of story.

And the organization might have to make that happen.

It's going to cost this much.

Does that fit with the numbers, right? And when they all start working together, that's when you really start to see success.

And that movement to sales and operations planning over the last five to 10 years, for those who get there, is a really big benefit.

And that's always where I recommend starting.

That's what it's great at.

At the moment, it's great in S&OP around digital twins, mapping, you know, trying to ensure business is resilient by mapping different versions of, um, forecasts and actually making, um, optionality, um, and details of underpinning the best option, and then people delivering the change.

Not AI, but people delivering the change, having that authentic link and actually building a business based on a, a really good combination of, um, AI and systems and processes, but led by people.

Uh, and, and we mustn't lose that, otherwise you end up with a business that I, I, I wonder what, what, what that would look like.

We don't have a role there.

But S&OP, we have a role in S&OP.

We'll be part of that.

So we're very structural in our system design about what our RACI matrix looks like to keep the team focused where they need to be.

So whoever can expand and own that area better, and I agree, operational data as well is something that has not traditionally been a strength of EPM.

And I know that some of the products are expanding in that area, supply chain, S&OP, other things that they're doing.

Whoever can get that one-stop shop where you can get a full view of what's driving the enterprise will be very appealing to the market.

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