by Greg West, Farthing West Chief Brilliance Officer
The great rewards from S&OP / IBP come through collaborative processes and focused planning. Forging a company culture that is unified in purpose. A company culture moving forward positively to achieve a common strategic direction.
The following is a guide to developing and improving your S&OP process. I have broken it into 4 sections. The first three sections are about People, Process and Technology, while the fourth is the importance of being Future Oriented.
The ten topics are:
- You have to ensure that the right people are in the room
- You have to provide strong leadership while promoting positive tension
- You need to work on the input to the process to achieve great outcomes
- It’s essential you design your system so that facts flow
- You have to measure the success of the process
- You have crunch big data, but present concise information.
- You need to focus on the exception
- You need to integrate the plan with real financial data
- You need to balance the long term strategic focus and short term objectives
- Don’t just develop scenarios, develop action plans
Over the next few blogs, I will elaborate each of these topics in detail. I hope you find it interesting and I look forward to your feedback.