sales operations planning
At Perlinski & Company, we believe that the core of any company is the ability for its executives and employees to work in concert to efficiently deliver its product or service to its customer.
In order to achieve this goal and have a strong core, alignment and commitment are required at all levels. The way to achieve alignment and commitment is through communications. Over the last two decades, a great deal of study has gone into the benefits of highly structuring the detailed communications required to optimize a company across all functions. The result of these studies has become the modern Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process.
A survey, published by Aberdeen Group (2005), indicated that best in class companies reported 12.5% higher % gross margin than industry norm, and 23% higher than those with less integrated and focused S&OP practices. For a company with $500 million in annual revenue, this difference amounts to $60 million in annual gross margin versus the average company, and $115 million versus the laggards.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Is there a clear link between the business plan and the operations of each department?
- Do you have an effective means of orchestrating all departments towards the same targets?
- Does your planning process yield a realistic plan capable of achieving the company’s objectives?
- Are decisions ever made in Operations, Marketing, Finance, Sales, Service or Product Development that surprise other organizations?
- Do your detailed operating plans and projects clearly support a master game plan?
- Do you have one set of numbers visible to all?
- Do you have balance in supply and demand while maintaining focus on P&L?
- Do you typically discuss
What, (who?) caused this problem?
Or…
How will we meet the numbers?
To ensure alignment between sales and operations, Perlinski & Company has authored best practices around the integration of these core capabilities within an organization as depicted below to achieve a an effective S&OP practice.
