Pour DIAGMA, le S&OP (Sales & Operations Planning) est un processus de pilotage et d’accélération de la croissance du chiffre d’affaires et de la rentabilité des entreprises.
Quels sont les éléments organisationnels essentiels à la réussite d’un S&OP ?
The 5th part of our approach focuses on the importance of a high-performance S&OP organization, equipped with the right reflexes, to drive the process and help the company win. We focus on the following four points:
Clear governance
Each player must have clearly defined roles and responsibilities, to avoid confusion and redundancy. In particular, the role of the S&OP manager is critical. He or she ensures that sales plans and company resources are synchronized. He alerts the company to any discrepancies between demand forecasts and the budget set for the year. And he coordinates the elaboration and presentation of business scenarios to the Managing Director for final arbitration. In some cases, he is even responsible for ensuring that everyone involved is trained in the best practices of the process. This may involve, for example, drawing up a single set of unbiased volume and value forecasts.
Support from General Management
The Managing Director and members of the Executive Committee must support the process, and be ready to decide on any points of arbitration raised by the S&OP manager. For example: should we respond to this invitation to tender? While it may be profitable, there is a risk that the quality of service for our current customers, and the associated sales, will be degraded. Finally, they must ensure the deployment and follow-up of S&OP action plans in the functional departments.
A culture of fruitful collaboration, combined with the importance of data
To have a high-performance S&OP organization, the company’s culture must promote virtuous behavior, and in particular :
- Seamless collaboration between functional teams. They need to focus on processes (e.g. demand planning). They must also focus on cross-functional projects (e.g.: drawing up scenarios to be presented to the General Manager for arbitration) in order to achieve common objectives.
- The ability to handle disagreements constructively. The aim is to find satisfactory solutions that are aligned with the company’s objectives, rather than the KPIs of each function. An example might be a disagreement between Purchasing and Supply Chain over a supplier that is cheaper, but unreliable in delivering a good service rate.
- The priority given to data analysis to build scenarios and help decision-making.
An incentive-based reward system
The reward system, combined with ongoing feedback, should encourage individual and team contributions to the S&OP process (e.g., achievement of forecasting target KPIs). Virtuous behavior (e.g. cross-functional collaboration on a key project) should also be rewarded. This may involve a financial bonus, or recognition expressed privately or publicly by the manager (e.g. distribution of trophies or certificates, if compatible with the company’s culture). Professional development opportunities, such as participation in conferences or specific projects, or a promotion, are also good ways of achieving this.
The challenges are many. How can you implement an S&OP process quickly and efficiently? This will be the subject of the 6th part of our series of articles.
And for you, what are the organizational prerequisites for effective S&OP management?
UA PROJECT? A QUESTION?
CONTACT-US !
Olivier Gautier
Director at DIAGMA
Précédents articles sur le S&OP :
ALIGN YOUR S&OP WITH YOUR BUSINESS STRATEGY
BUILD A MORE EFFICIENT S&OP PROCESS
