“Why am I focused on the supply chain? The answer is simple. It is a barometer of my business. All the problems show up first in the supply chain….”
— Dell Founder, Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell
I love this quote from Michael Dell. It came from an interview when I was writing the book, Bricks Matter.
Leaders are clear that good planning matters. The rest of the world continues to look for evidence. As a researcher, I am attempting to measure the impact.
Over the course of the last week, I have been writing about maturity in supply chain planning. This week, we will be sharing research from over 90 respondents on Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP). It is from a new quantitative survey. Check out our new report.
In this report, we find that S&OP processes have grown more complex in scope and governance over the last decade. The average company over 3B$ in annual revenue has four S&OP processes. We also find that S&OP maturity matters. As companies mature in S&OP that they rate themselves 2X more mature on ability and 46% better on cross-functional alignment. To accomplish this, the goal of the S&OP process needs to move from a focus on volume to evaluate product mix/profitability. Companies the most mature in “what-if” analysis and the use of optimization tend to rate themselves higher in maturity.
Who doesn’t want a more agile and aligned organization? Don’t miss this webinar on Thursday, June 13th at 1:00 PM. We hope to have you join us!
Case Study: A Scrappy Demand Management Approach
June 9, 2026
5:37 pm
This study of Franklin Sports shines a light on the work that needs to be done at the sales account level to challenge a retail forecast, and also highlights the importance of a new technique for a forecast engine — reinforcement learning.
Artificial intelligence comes in many forms — large language models, generative AI, machine learning, unstructured text mining, deep learning, neural networks, reinforcement learning, agents, and agentics. While the industry is wigging out about agentics, I think reinforcement learning is a great step forward in the journey of Artificial Intelligence.
