Planning Analytics
Has the thought of revamping your ineffective Sales and Operations Planning process ever crossed your mind? There’s certainly no lack of advice on the topic of S&OP on the Internet. Effective sales and operations planning is a combination of both process and technology – with a concentration on collaboration, stakeholder buy-in, executive support and the adoption of analytics.
The interaction between business management process and related technology tools should enhance synchronization and improve supply chain functions such as statistical forecasting, consensus demand planning, supply and manufacturing planning and executive reviews. The adoption of analytics in support of these supply chain functions can provide advanced capability into exposing disconnects and identifying optimized solutions.
The integration of analytics can be adopted systematically over time based on an organizations existing analytical maturity. Determining the value of analytics can certainly support improvements. Consider enhancing the sales and operations planning process with analytics by first evaluating the demand forecast. Since it is such an important part of any planning process, even small improvements in forecast accuracy can have positive results throughout an organization. Over time, an organization can evolve to leverage additional analytics capability to improve the business management process.
Some areas to consider as part of a more analytics driven process include
- Utilizing big data
- Statistical forecasting
- Demand sensing analysis
- Demand shaping analysis
- Demand and supply what-if analysis
- Data mining and segmentation
- Inventory and network optimization analysis