Success is often a question of margins. Therefore, Supply Chain Planning is more important than ever for enterprises who want to streamline operations, reduce costs, improve delivery performance, and increase profitability.
Successful Supply Chain Planning is about hitting the sweet spot where costs and revenues meet in the most profitable solution. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.
All too often, supply chain planning, financial planning, and decision-making are undertaken without the necessary data and insights. And the consequences are tangible: poor delivery performance, internal disagreements about what to do, inefficient plant performance, high operational costs and poor delivery performance – to name just a few.
Enterprises need to replace old-fashioned gut instinct with work processes and solutions that enable better informed decision-making – to achieve more efficient and profitable supply chain planning.
Sales & Operations Planning – also known as S&OP – is a process that supports enterprises all over the world to align operational plans across different functional areas. The process is made up of four focus areas, starting with the demand review. Here, the objective is to deliver a demand plan based on statistical and management forecasts including the right product mix for each product family.
After focusing on the demand, it is time to review the supply. How many resources are required? What are the capacity constraints for each product family? Here, you agree on the answers. At the pre-S&OP meeting, you build scenarios based on your review of demand and supply in order to create the foundation for good decision-making before the final decisions are made at the executive S&OP meeting. All decisions are the result of the preceding work with a focus on previous history, current business conditions, and future ambitions. The outcome is a more realistic supply chain plan that is not only based on, but will also increase, cross-functional collaboration.
Profitable planning is about asking the right questions – and finding the right answers. Historically, supply chain planning has focused solely on quantity. In terms of production time and working hours. And in terms of machines and units. But something is missing in this quantitative arena. We need to answer the most important question: will we make money?
Sales & Operation Planning – also known as S&OP – is a process that supports professionals all over the world to integrate planning across different functional areas – all to help answer this crucial question about profitability. By focusing on both costs and revenues, S&OP elevates supply chain planning so that it is part of the bigger picture with dedicated focus on the financial aspects. Knowing which options maximize the contribution to the gross margin enables you to take better and more profitable decisions.
If S&OP is the backbone of supply chain planning, then working with Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is key to unleashing its full potential.
IBP builds on the S&OP processual focus on demand & supply by adding financial planning. This enables enterprises to create financial scenarios showing key figures, such as customer and product profitability.
Working with IBP is very much about integrating strategic and tactical planning with operational planning. Drawing the line from daily operations to financial output at an executive level isn’t done overnight but needs to be implemented through different maturity stages.
In short, you need to get the basics right, which in this case, is the functional planning process focusing on manufacturing and logistics. With this in place, it is possible to start anticipating patterns and supply-and-demand plans; collaborating across all relevant functional operations, before orchestrating activities that will help achieve end-to-end connectivity. The possibilities are enormous and so is the potential.
The processual work with IBP is scalable, so you can match it to your needs. Maybe you just need to streamline operational planning? Or maybe you are looking for the complete solution that enables your enterprise to exploit the full power of working with data?
Whatever your needs, NTT DATA Business Solutions Nordic will analyze them to help you succeed. Our experts already assist national and international enterprises to succeed with S&OP.
SAP Integrated Business Planning is a cloud-based solution that allows enterprises to align Sales, Marketing, Finance, Operations & Logistics for S&OP. This is made possible by combining capabilities for S&OP and the result is a strengthened collaboration across business units with all employees now working with a single set of numbers – something that is crucial in today’s supply chain planning.
All too often, supply chain planning does not go as planned, because people across the enterprise analyze and interpret the same numbers differently. With SAP Integrated Business Planning, all business units and employees work with a single set of numbers, which reduces daily confusion and misalignment. This not only results in more effective resource planning, it also enables professionals to find the best possible solution in respect of constraints and expected financial output. Therefore, it is no surprise that SAP Integrated Business Planning is the leading planning solution for enterprises across the world.
From here, you can see everything. The SAP Supply Chain Control Tower enables users to get an updated end-to-end overview of their supply chain, including production and shipment among others. This monitoring not only helps you to optimize supply chain performance and improve on-time delivery performance but also to reduce supply chain cost.
Align sales and operations plans with your corporate strategy to effectively improve your supply chain planning and decision-making. Based on the S&OP process, you can achieve cross-department collaboration on demand and supply to create the optimal and most profitable business case – all to help attain your financial targets.
Streamline your supply chain planning with precise short-term, mid-term, and long-term forecasting by combining demand sensing and statistical forecasting methods. This enables you to react faster to demand changes and generate consensus forecasts at any level that are more precise than ever.
Optimize multi-stage inventory targets to maximize the efficiency of inventory and working capital. The solution ensures that inventory is deployed in the most efficient way and allows you to automate and standardize the planning process, which will enable you to reduce product and distribution costs while improving customer service levels.
Combine speed with precision. With this solution you can create advanced supply chain planning simulations, which provide the overview needed to take well-informed decisions on prioritized customers. This helps enterprises plan more effectively and in doing so, manage resources better and optimize profits.
The GIB Suite features a wide range of efficient and well-proven supply chain optimization solutions. This helps enterprises work smarter and achieve multiple benefits. From improving the balance of supply and demand to reducing costs. From optimizing inventory to planning ahead with data-based forecasting.
The GIB Suite is SAP-certified, which allows you to seamlessly integrate the desired solutions into your existing SAP system. So, say goodbye to the stack of Excel files and tools that don’t work together – and hello to a selection of reliable and connected solutions that will enable you to make better business decisions.
Is it possible to predict the future? GIB Suite Forecast is a data-driven crystal ball that increases forecast reliability and optimizes demand planning. With its advanced forecast models, it is possible to simulate the impact of planning and constantly optimize your work through ex-post analysis.
With GIB Suite Operations, you get access to all MRP-relevant information thanks to individual user layouts and default layouts. The improved transparency enables employees to navigate through the day-to-day operations, and enterprises work smarter and faster as a result.
Overview is everything in planning – and with the dynamic planning table, you get a real-time overview of short and long-term planning. Additionally, the solution enables immediate triggering of necessary measures, e.g. in case of bottlenecks. All in all, this helps enterprises achieve error-free and time-saving production planning.
With GIB Suite Controlling, you can efficiently optimize inventory for the long-term. The solution offers several features, e.g. integration of requirement-specific key figures and simulation of MRP parameters, which not only ensures full transparency of inventory drivers and risk materials but also enables evaluation of future consequences and risks.
With GIB Suite Controlling, you can reduce transportation and storage costs, while improving your delivery performance. By combining purchase requisitions into PO bundles, you improve supply chain transparency and optimize order-handling, which facilitates an ordering process focused on range of coverage (RoC).
With GIB Suite Vendor managed Inventory, you can integrate vendors who do not have their own SAP/ERP system in a browser-based application. The easy inclusion of even the smallest vendor enables more efficient transition of responsibility for operational MRP management to the vendor, which improves vendor flexibility and transparency, streamlines actions, and optimizes inventories – all to increase liquidity.
NTT DATA Business Solutions has developed a wide range of solutions to enhance and expand you IT landscape and supply chain processes.
All of our SCM AddOns are designed to meet the requirements of a connected and digitalized world and help to simplify and monitor your supply chain processes. The solutions cover areas such as smart supply chain planning and logistics, efficient delivery and goods management, optimized warehouse management and advanced transportation management.
Visit our AddStore to learn more about our supply chain management AddOns and what we can do for your business processes.
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