At what point does erosion cause the side of a mountain to give way? It is usually the small shifts….over time, there is degradation. And, then suddenly, the mountain gives way collapsing to the land below. S&OP Slip Slidin’ Away …the same is happening in supply chain processes. This week, as I worked on my Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) report, I found myself tapping my foot to the same music…
Sharing of research on Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) showing that processes are going backwards not forwards in driving improvement.
Yawn. I spent time this week completing reference calls on the use of S&OP technologies. Seeking the next sequel in technology adoption, I want to write how the confluence of new technologies changed companies’ abilities to improve decisions. Based on the reference calls, I am not sure that this will be possible. What am I hearing? Eerily the case studies sound the same as the ones heard when I completed…
Yowza: Excitement or approval Get a cup of coffee. This is a long post. <Bear with me….> Here I share a nine-step process in an attempt to help companies unravel the process for buying supply chain planning software. The genesis for this post stems from frustration. I get the same questions over-and-over again, and see companies making the same mistakes. Let’s face a hard fact: the supply chain planning market…
When I joined the world of software as a business analyst from manufacturing, I was naive. How so? I never fathomed the amount of money that commissioned software sales personnel make selling software. This high level of compensation drives extreme behavior. In the selection of software, where the rubber meets the road, the sale of software often becomes a brutal and competitive battle. With a heightened focus on winning the deal,…
A lasso is what supply chain leaders would like to have. Why? To align S&OP. The processes are out of control. Let me explain. As companies transitioned from regional to multi-national organizations, Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) processes proliferated. Today, the average company has seven S&OP processes, but a global chemical company averages over 30. In contrast, as a regional supply chain leader in the 1990’s, my company had one…
This morning E2open announced the acquisition of Steelwedge for an undisclosed sum of money. Founded in 2000, Steelwedge was an innovator in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) and was an early provider of cloud solutions for supply chain. I estimate that the company had annual sales of 30M$. Clients include Canon, Pfizer, HP Inc, Jaguar Land Rover, Lenovo, Nissan and Monsanto. When E2open called to tell me of the acquisition, they…
It is Sunday. Today I assume a familiar position. Now a ritual, with coffee in one hand and country music blaring, I sit in my faded green chair to write a blog post. I have done this for seven years. This afternoon I am writing my 334th blog post. I will also pen my 95th report for this week’s Supply Chain Insights newsletter. We now reach 23,000 supply chain leaders…
Yesterday morning I was sick. In the early morning, in a hotel room in Antwerp, I crawled to the bathroom and groaned as my body expelled what I think was food poisoning. The body is amazingly efficient in getting rid of what is making you sick. Feeling very green, I stumbled through the airport and found my way to my seat on the plane from Brussels to Philadelphia. <The joys of…
An effective S&OP plan is the goal of many, but there is no clear industry definition of an effectiveness. While there are many maturity models, most are not research based. To better understand the characteristics of an effective S&OP plan, we just completed a study of 73 companies. In the quantitative survey completed this summer, 30 respondents rate their processes as effective and 43 rate the their S&OP processes as less effective on a…
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