What if it were possible to tightly link sales, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing and finance so that executives could easily see the financial impact of plans, see variances between supply and demand plans and align actual results with financial targets? Decision-makers could continually fine-tune plans backward and forward, to create the best plans - and substantially improve business agility and financial performance.
That's the purpose of sales and operations planning (S&OP) - to align demand, supply and finance plans. S&OP enables decision-makers to reach consensus on a single operating plan that drives increased market share and balances critical resources to reach performance goals.
The need for executive review
In addition to the sales and operations planning (S&OP) that manufacturing companies undertake - typically an annual plan with rolling monthly or quarterly reviews - the most effective S&OP process involves periodic S&OP reviews by senior management. The purpose of the executive review is to evaluate performance against the existing plan, identify any business or market changes that might necessitate changes to the plan and to make necessary adjustments.
The IBM Cognos S&OP Performance Blueprint facilitates the initial plan and any necessary monthly or quarterly adjustments. Complementing this Blueprint, the IBM Cognos S&OP Executive Review Performance Blueprint is an executive management tool designed to facilitate the periodic review. Typically, production and sales demand is reviewed weekly, and a formal S&OP executive review is conducted monthly.
Key capabilities
The IBM Cognos S&OP Executive Review Performance Blueprint is a performance management framework - including planning, metrics and reporting. Key capabilities include:
- A structured process for integrating and summarizing the detailed plan generated by the IBM Cognos S&OP Performance Blueprint.
- Summarization of calculated metrics, exception alerts, linkages to scorecards and reports to measure financial and customer service performance (plan vs. actual).
- What-if modeling that enables managers to perform multidimensional, multi-scenario analysis to test the impact of changes in demand, supply chain capabilities and constraints, and to see the associated financial impact of those changes - capturing assumptions as well as annotations
- Strategic financial management - ensuring organizational objectives for sales, profitability, balance sheet and cash flow are met.
- Integrated workflow to manage and consolidate plans.
- A visual scorecard to display the status of the planning process, so that appropriate actions can be taken to complete it.
- Alerts that communicate approved plans to stakeholders, ensuring they are aware of initiatives that will impact S&OP.
Learn more about the IBM Cognos S&OP Executive Review Performance Blueprint. Download the:
