Executive Brief

Sales & Operations PlanningAlign your plans with your goals.

HighlightsSimultaneously increase top line revenue while improving margins.

More consistently make the right decision for your business.

More accurately forecast demand and supply.

Get more value from your capital assets and workforce.

Make decisions that producethe best resultsThe questions you face every day and the positive ornegative impact your decisions can have on your businesshaven’t really changed, at least not fundamentally. You’vealways faced pressure to produce and deliver productsfaster, for a lower cost, and with higher quality. It’s just thatthe pressure’s been turned up in recent years because offactors like globalization, the world recession, materialshortages, volatile transportation costs, and risingcustomer expectations.

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) has always beenthe business process used to manage these challenges,but these new pressures have meant that the technologythat supports this process is at a breaking point.

According to an Aberdeen Group survey, nearly 75% ofcompanies are still using simple spreadsheets to managetheir S&OP processes. Because they lack more advancedsoftware capabilities, these companies have to allocate upto 60% of their S&OP budget to just moving data in andout of documents or stand-alone solutions, and validatingand cleansing the information. This leaves less than half oftheir budget to devote to the real value that sales andoperations planning can provide.

Improve operational andfinancial performanceIn recent years, sales & operations planning has evolvedin several positive ways. First, more companies arerealizing that S&OP is a distinct—and important—businessprocess that can improve the integration of criticalbusiness information and create a framework for moreeffective decision making. Second, technology has keptpace with the growing interest in sales and operationsplanning and can now make the promise of S&OP anattainable goal. S&OP technologies available today areversatile—they can transform the most basic S&OPprocesses into an advanced solution, as well as supportand improve mature S&OP processes.

Here is a summary of what S&OP is and how it canimprove your operations:

The objective. Next-generation S&OP synchronizes yourcustomer demand with your production and/or distributionin a way that helps you achieve your strategic andfinancial business objectives. S&OP enables decision

makers to achieve consensus on a single operating planthat profitably matches supply and demand while alignedto executive business goals.

What S&OP entails. S&OP requires people in all majorbusiness areas to perform their designated tasks usingone common set of accurate and timely information. Thebusiness process also gives decision makers throughoutyour company the tools to consistently take actions andmake decisions that further your company’sstrategic objectives.

The key characteristics of a next-generation S&OP process. S&OP is a business process focused on coordinatingactions across your enterprise, analyzing the action you’vetaken or plan to take, and making sure decisions andother actions optimize your business operations. Anext-generation S&OP solution will help you:

• Alert people in your organization to take specificoperational actions. The process should automaticallyalert individuals in your company to the tasks theyneed to perform and provide them with theinformation they need to completethe task confidently.

• Track the actions taken. You should be able to trackindividual actions centrally to confirm work is gettingdone properly and to maintain the data needed foranalysis of decisions at all levels.

• Analyze your choices. You should be able to performwhat-if analyses of the implications of differentbusiness decisions. A next-generation S&OP solutionwill let you pick different parameters for a choice youhave to make and then see what will happen to youroperational and financial plans if you act on thosechoices. For example, your production managershould be able to assess what will happen if he

2 Infor Sales & Operations Planning

Important information for the people inyour organization who are responsiblefor aligning strategic goals and financialforecasts with day-to-day sales andoperations planning:

• Senior executives

• Demand planning managers

• Production managers

• Financial managers

pursues different manufacturing volumes orapproaches to resources. A supply chain plannershould be able to see the results of differentresponses to seasonal demand shifts. Your financeand sales departments should be to see how thesedifferent choices will impact their key metrics.

• Put it all together to identify and exploit opportunities.Your S&OP process should let you see how trends inyour business are affecting your performance. Thehistorical approach to S&OP limited you to scrutinizingeither low-level details or the high-level perspective.Next-generation S&OP should let you drill down froma strategic level to investigate the cause of individualtrends in detail.

Technology underpins aneffective S&OP business processLike any strategic business process at a manufacturer orproduct distributor, technology can play an important rolein helping you take full advantage of the business valuepromised by sales and operations planning. In the wordsof PJ Jakovljevic and Khudsiya Quadri, analysts forTechnical Evaluation Centers, Inc., writing in a 2010 report,“The bottom line: S&OP is a process; a better processrequires better technology. Spreadsheets simply cannotsupport the level of detail, collaboration, accountability,and monitoring needed for a mature S&OP process.”

Here are the core capabilities a sales and operationsplanning solution should deliver:

• Enable the process. You should be able to documentyour S&OP process inside the solution. This meansbeing able to document activities, participants, reports,approval, and publishing rules so that the system, notan individual, drives adherence to the process. Thisensures S&OP is always on and running and becomesendemic in your organization.

• Support “what-if” simulations. You should be able torun scenarios for different demand and supply profilesand consider “what-if” alternatives that show theprobable financial impact of different strategic,operational, and tactical events. High-level executivesshould be able to perform immediate strategicanalysis of these “what-if” simulations.

• Offer robust data gathering, integration, andmanagement capabilities. A good S&OP solution willcreate a common repository of integrated data fromacross the enterprise and in key parts of the supplychain. The solution should be able to compile andintegrate data regardless of its source and format.

• Synchronize units and currency. The solution shouldsynchronize the monetary forecast and the unitforecast so your finance staff and operations staff havea common view of your business. This will replace thecommon situation where the finance staff views thebusiness only in financial terms and the operationsstaff views the business only in terms of volume ofproducts made and/or shipped.

• Engage with all teams across the supply chain. TheS&OP solution should enable your design, supply,operations, marketing, finance and other stakeholdersto collaborate and drive toward a single consensusplan for your business. Trying to do this usingspreadsheets that require manual importing andexporting of data between business areas will neverbe as efficient as a multi-user software solution thatcompiles and stores information automatically andprovides interactive analytical capabilities.

• Sense and respond to events. Your S&OP solutionshould help you sense and respond to plan deviationsand other events. Since deviations to your plan areinevitable, an S&OP solution should feature asystematic and efficient way to give the properindividual the right information when an unplannedevent occurs so an appropriate adjustment can bemade. You should be able to analyze the exceptionsto determine the cause and then communicate that tothe appropriate people so it can be used to improveyour plan and processes.

• Continuously measure key performance indicators. Anext-generation S&OP solution should let you reviewand improve your performance on an ongoing basis. Itshould measure your progress toward financialobjectives on an ongoing basis and supportcontinuous improvement.

Align your supply anddemand with your overallbusiness strategyIf you’ve determined that your business could benefit fromimproved sales and operations planning, Infor Sales &Operations Planning (S&OP) can help. With Sales &Operations Planning, your finance, sales, marketing,operations, and executive teams can work togetherefficiently to implement a single operating plan thatmatches supply to demand while driving to your strategicbusiness and financial goals. With Infor Sales & OperationsPlanning, you get to:

• Streamline the process for collecting critical businessinformation in a central location.

3Infor Sales & Operations Planning

641 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10011800-260-2640infor.com

About Infor.Infor is the world's third-largest supplier of enterprise applications and services, helping more than 70,000 large and mid-size companiesimprove operations and drive growth across numerous industry sectors. To learn more about Infor, please visit www.infor.com.

Copyright© 2012 Infor. All rights reserved. The word and design marks set forth herein are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Infor and/or related affiliates and subsidiaries. All othertrademarks listed herein are the property of their respective owners. This document is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute a commitment to you in any way. Theinformation, products and services described herein are subject to change at any time without notice. www.infor.com.INF1236412-1241057-EN-US-1012-2

• Give your employee’s immediate access toinformation tailored to their specific role in yourbusiness and the tools they need to act on the information.

• Manage tasks based on designated key performanceindicators, incorporating the activities of multipledepartments and multiple decision makers.

• Create and track multiple scenarios and versions ofyour plan and perform what-if analysis so you canassess the implications of a decision before youcommit to it.

• Make decisions about inventory, production, sales,marketing, and customer service with moreconfidence and with a greater likelihood the outcomewill benefit your business.

S&OP delivers the goods foryou, your company, and your customersWith a next-generation S&OP solution, you better alignstrategic plans and operational execution. You becomeconfident that the choices you are making—at all levels ofthe enterprise—are the most profitable among the optionsyou have. You consistently choose the best plan formeeting customer demand and you can adjust the planfrequently as business needs dictate and as you getbetter insights into supply and demand trends and performance.

When your implement a sales and operations planningprocess supported by the right technology, you can:

• Improve top line revenue.

• Make the right decision for the business moreconsistently.

• Forecast demand and supply more accurately.

• Get more value from your capital assets andworkforce.

• Adapt your operations and your plans more quickly tochanging business conditions.

• Create and maintain more accurate budgets.

• Respond better to customer mandates for faster, moreaccurate and more unique fulfilment.

• Reduce supply chain operating costs.

• Reduce cash-to-cash cycle times.

• Maintain higher customer service levels.