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by David O'Brien , Contributing Editor Posted on Monday, May 01, 2006 12:33:00 PM   Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is structure/process that many organizations put in place to translate upstream data, intelligence on customer demand, from the front office -- sales and marketing -- into actionable and profitable operational plans used by logistics, manufacturing, and procurement organizations. When done correctly, S&OP is a collaborative, cross-functional process that aligns capabilities and exposes opportunities within a defined business strategy. In our most recent survey of SMB manufacturers, we found a surprisingly high number of SMB companies indicating that they had formal Sales and Operation in place today. Although these teams at smaller manufacturing companies do tend to have less experience (50% of SMB S&OP teams have been in place for three or more years, versus 70% at larger companies), the fact that current deployment is high suggests that even smaller organizations are thinking proactively about how to better synch demand with supply -- and are being pulled into demand-driven environment (see chart). [Click to continue] |