How to master the sales and operations planning process? 

Every business aims to deliver the right product to the right customers at the right time.  

Achieving this goal requires more than luck. But, integrating sales and operations planning can make things easier. 

You can create a unified plan that drives operational efficiency and customer satisfaction by integrating various organizational functions.   

Did you know that 70% of businesses have adopted S&OP processes for better planning and accurate forecasting? Knowing the sales and operations planning process is crucial for your business.   

This article will explore the definition of sales and operations planning (S&OP), its benefits, best practices, and more.   

Let’s begin…  

What is sales and operations planning? 

Sales and operations planning is a procedure that aligns demand, supply, forecasting, financial planning, capacity planning, market analysis, risk management, and supply chain optimization.

Sales and operations planning are designed and executed to support senior management decision-making regarding approving a more feasible and profitable plan.   

Besides, sales operations planning uses aggregate demand as a starting point and compares the expected demand for resources such as machines, manpower, and material capacity.     

The S&OP covers both strategic and tactical planning. Strategic insights will help us understand how demand may shift geographies or how a product line can impact decisions such as longer-term supply management.   

Meanwhile, tactical S&OP planning creates a production plan approved by executive management, which creates a master schedule and requirements plan.   

Now, let’s understand the purpose of sales planning and operations in your business.

What is the purpose of sales and operations planning? 

The purpose of S&OP is to align an organization’s supply chain planning and operational activities with its overall business goals and market demand.   

By gathering data from sales, marketing, finance, and operations, S&OP ensures that a company can meet demand efficiently while optimizing inventory target levels and resource utilization.   

This process helps businesses improve customer service, forecasting accuracy, streamline operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction by ensuring that all departments work towards a unified plan.   

Ultimately, S&OP enables better decision-making and enhances collaboration across the organization, leading to increased profitability and competitiveness in the market.  

6 Steps of sales and operations planning process

The primary purpose of securing a sales and operations planning process is to coordinate with the business units to ensure transparency, demand, supply, and other factors.  

Here is a detailed explanation of the sales and operations planning: 

1) Forecasting and S&OP concepts 

This is the first stage of the sales planning and operations process. The data is gathered based on the prior sales, and the forecast is made subsequently.   

Moreover, it is crucial to consider whether any missing internal and external factors impact sales. During this period, current trends and circumstances are identified and analyzed.    

2) Demand planning 

Effective team collaboration becomes crucial for every business when the demand plan stage of S&OP planning arrives.   

Here, the previous stage forecasts are analyzed. Inventory levels and customer service policies are adjusted based on product demand and source. Demand is traditionally measured in terms of revenue or units.  

3) Supply planning 

In the supply plan stage, representatives from finance, operations, and materials evaluate their capacity. This stage analyzes whether there are any budget constraints within personnel, machinery, or suppliers.   

From there, supply chains are created that account for any identified capacity constraints within the process. 

4) Pre-S and OP meeting 

In this stage of the S&OP process, the various leaders from finance, sales, marketing, operations, materials, product management, and human resources meet to collaborate.   

They compare the forecasts to the demand and supply stages and assess their financial impact on the business. 

5) Executive S&OP planning meeting 

The stage will arrive when the teams have to hold an executive meeting to analyze the forecasts, plans, and recommendations that the executive team will provide in the pre-S&OP planning. 

The final sales and operations execution plan will have been approved by the end of the executive pre-S&OP meeting.  

6) Finalize and planning implementation 

Once the sales and operations planning are finalized, it will be the accurate time for the companies to implement them. After implementing an S&OP plan, it becomes mandatory for all businesses to evaluate it at regular intervals. 

Benefits of sales and operations planning process 

For businesses, a proper S&OP plan can help with sales growth by 30%, which can set and achieve clear goals. The implementation of sales and operations planning can give multiple benefits to your business: 

Increased customer service levels

An enterprise will likely be more profitable if the planning and decision-making are accurate.   

An S&OP platform can integrate various customer service functions, helping save time.  

When top-level management finalizes the plan, the sales and operation planning platform allows the teams to collaborate and communicate with each other.    

This timely collaboration allows for a regular performance review that improves organizational functions.  

For proper S&OP processes a need of a handy tool is a necessity!

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Better profitability 

Sales and operations planning focus on long-term planning, making the company even more proactive. Improving operational plans enhances supply chain management.  

With effective S&OP planning execution, an organization can minimize its functioning errors, eventually allowing better forecasting for the future. 

Also read: 18 Top Sales Forecasting Methods – Choose the Right One!

Informed decision making 

Sales and operation planning provides constructive insights into managing production and inventory levels by balancing supply and demand for a product.    

This helps stakeholders avoid supply chain blues such as overstocking, understocking, and excessive raw material procurement. 

Better risk mitigation

Relevant data is restored regularly so supply chain management can achieve complete transparency on actions through the S&OP platform.    

Such visibility helps take action against unwarranted internal or external disruptions and helps the enterprise succeed. 

Customer service levels 

When the management improves inventory planning resource utilization, distributor performance, and product availability, it becomes the customers’ go-to brand.    

The factors above are crucial for customer retention and should be achieved with an S&OP platform.

Accountability 

Sales and operation planning software helps assign tasks to each team member, making them aware of their roles and responsibilities. 

An S&OP platform enables the team to make a quick action plan and gives them decision-making competence for the functions they handle.   

This is one of the many ways the platform boosts team collaboration. 

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Competitive edge  

The right tools allow an organization to quickly adapt and plan for potential challenges.   

Within the volatile market, having an S&OP application overseeing the actual operations becomes easy.   

The characteristic transparency of the S&OP software makes the management even more accountable.

Challenges of sales and operations planning S&OP  

The inherent complexity of coordinating across diverse groups during the planning cycle presents a significant challenge, and several other obstacles will also arise in sales and operations planning:  

• Ensuring accurate and timely reporting on demand and supply inputs to support the informed decision-making processes. 
• Crafting presentations that effectively illustrate decision-making outcomes and their impact on key performance indicators such as customer service, supply chain costs, and revenue. 
• Strategically planning for introducing new products, phasing out existing ones, or integrating new products due to mergers or acquisitions. 
• Converting large volumes of data from multiple systems into actionable insights that drive final decisions.

Different metrics to measure sales & operations planning  

Two principal metrics measure sales and operations planning in your business. Through these two metrics, measure your S&OP planning progress toward your goals: 

1) Demand and supply S&OP metrics 

Demand and supply metrics can help determine if your forecasts are accurate and the demand=supply: 

• Demand forecast versus actual 
• Production forecast versus actual 
• Inventory turnover 
• Capacity utilization 
• On-time delivery 
• Accuracy in order delivery 
• Cycle times

2) Finance S&OP metrics 

The finance metrics show you how the business is performing from a finance point of view:  

• Total sales in a period (e.g., month, quarter, year)  
• Total sales versus forecast  
• Gross margin  
• Working capital versus plan

What are sales and operations planning best practices? 

Sales and operations planning requires many tips and tricks that can help in achieving an accurate plan throughout for better tips:

1) Executive ownership of your S&OP 

Successful sales and operations planning requires precision. With the S&OP cycle, you‘re essentially trying to facilitate elements of your business.   

The practice requires any firm to have active executive leadership, such as a CEO or general manager.  

There is always an imbalance between the organization’s supply and demand. Therefore, consistently enforced standards should exist.

2) Keep things simple 

If you monitor many factors between your business’s supply and demand plans, your planning might become inefficient, and the visibility you’re trying to maintain between departments could be vague.  

Instead of measuring everything, you can create a list of relevant metrics to determine how different parts of your business work together.  

Try to keep metrics tracking between 10 and 15. Make them crucial, and don’t let them slip away from future S&OP plans. 

3) Better maintain records 

Successful sales and operations planning is ongoing. It depends on your ability to learn from your previous mistakes and correct them. For that, keep detailed records of your previous plans and business processes.  

Document all aspects of your S&OP efforts, and those reference points can be central to your planning’s sustained success.

4) Cross-functional engagement  

Cross-organizational collaboration is at the core of all sales and operations planning. Stakeholders from every impacted facet of the business need to be included and involved in the process.  

Your sales and operations planning will not be particularly helpful or productive if you only consider sales process contributions and interests while ignoring other departments like operations and finance.  

Every team involved must clearly understand how others perform and where they come from.  

That information needs to flow freely between teams. To get the most out of your sales and operations planning, you need to keep everyone in the loop and stress cross-functional engagement.

How does a CRM simplify your S&OP? 

CRM systems can improve sales forecasts accuracy by 32%.

A customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can significantly enhance the sales and operations planning (S&OP) process by providing a centralized platform that integrates data gathering across sales and operations.  

This integration ensures that all departments can access consistent, real-time information crucial for accurate demand forecasting and supply planning.  

CRM systems streamline the S&OP process by automating data collection from various customer touchpoints. This enables more accurate demand forecasts based on historical sales data, customer behavior, and market trends.  

Additionally, CRMs facilitate better collaboration between departments by providing a unified platform where sales, marketing, and operations teams can share insights and align their strategies.  

This helps bring transparency within the organization, ensure that everyone is working towards the same goals, and improve the overall efficiency of the S&OP process.  

Moreover, CRMs enhance the visibility of the sales pipeline, allowing operations teams to anticipate demand more accurately and adjust production schedules accordingly.  

In short, a CRM simplifies S&OP by providing the tools needed to integrate and analyze data, foster collaboration, and ensure that planning is proactive and responsive to market changes.  

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Top four sales and operations planning software

The four S&OP software solutions are chosen to enhance your convenience, offering the best features to support your business’s optimal planning: 

1) Salesmate 

Salesmate can be an excellent tool for sales and operations planning. It can enhance communication, improve data accuracy, streamline cross-functional communication, and more. 

Here are the various features to help you integrate it during your S&OP planning process.

Features

• Integration capabilities: Top app integrations for better real-time updates ensure that all departments use the latest information. 
• Sales forecasting: For better sales and revenue predictions during the S&OP process. 
• Reporting and analytics: Reporting capabilities allow tracking key metrics without hassle. 
• Lead management: Prioritizing the high-value leads ensures the alignment of operational and financial sales efforts. 
• Smart email tracking ensures better customer communication, leading to more predictable demand patterns that influence supply chain and inventory decisions.

Salesmate is the perfect tool for every medium to large enterprise for better planning and execution. 

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Salesmate can be your perfect companion for sales and operations planning and execution.

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2) Oracle S&OP cloud 

Oracle provides process templates to make your S&OP planning process even smoother.  

In Oracle, you can monitor each stage of the process and dashboards that can allow you to see KPI summary graphics. It enables you to collaborate with different teams and assign tasks hassle-free.   

The features include social collaboration resources, accommodations for organizations with several users, S&OP, and aggregate planning capabilities.  

Features  

• Embedded analytics  
• Microsoft with Microsoft Excel  
• Consensus forecasting  
• Supply chain management integration

3) Infor S&OP planning 

With Infor’s sales and planning operations software, you can synchronize demand and supply imbalances, coordinate across business units, and analyze performance.  

It even includes predictive financial analysis to see how business decisions will impact the bottom line.   

You don’t need to be an IT specialist to leverage it, which allows users to be closer to your sales and operations plan to manage data and processes.   

Features  

• Advanced analytics  
• Demand forecasting  
• Finance integration  
• Collaboration tools 

4) Vangard IBP & SOP planning 

Vanguard predictive planning is an apt resource. Their S&OP is an AI-based impact analysis solution.  

Besides, it provides a view of your business sales, demand, supply, and production to form accurate, constraint-based plans, among other features and benefits like SAP integrated business planning.  

Vanguard’s resources for collaboration across sales and operations planning distinguish it from others. The platform includes business intelligence software that enables users to create charts, reports, and dashboards.   

Features  

• Monte Carlo simulation  
• Integrated business planning  
• GDPR compliant  
• Collaborative tool

Trends in enterprise sales and operations planning 

The apps can follow various futuristic trends through the advanced process that can help in getting a better S&OP process: 

Advanced analytics and AI integration 

AI and machine learning technology are being used more successfully and frequently to support some of the automatable decisions made in S&OP.  

Examples include using machine learning to predict available capacity to drive promotion planning or to quickly discover and recommend no changes to highly stable and mature product planning, reducing analysis cycles.   

Advanced analytics solutions, implemented to work in concert with supply chain execution in logistics, manufacturing, and order management, are increasing the availability of information that provides supply chain managers with decision criteria related to performance to plan.  

This, in turn, reduces the decision latency, which may have historically relied on the next S&OP planning cycle to adjust. 

Supply chain digitalization 

The digitization of the supply chain continues to be a dominant trend in 2024. From end-to-end visibility to real-time tracking, digital technologies are transforming traditional supply chain models.   

Companies leverage technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) to create more transparent and efficient supply chain networks. This reduces lead times and minimizes supply chain disruptions, making the S&OP process more resilient.

Customer centricity 

Customer-centricity is at the forefront of S&OP strategies. Understanding and anticipating customer demands is crucial for success.   

Companies leverage data analytics to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and buying patterns.   

This information is then integrated into the S&OP process to align production and inventory levels with actual market demand, ensuring customer satisfaction while minimizing excess inventory costs.

Conclusion 

Sales and operations planning has evolved more from a simple demand-supply alignment process.  

An advanced business management process that streamlines business functions and enables companies to correctly predict market trends and make the best decisions about their product development. 

With sales and operations planning, you can keep virtually every aspect of your company on the same page, allowing for smoother functioning and a more cohesive organization. Salesmate can be a great help in streamlining all the processes. 

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