Is Your President Engaged in the S&OP Process?

Without the commitment of your senior executive, the S&OP process will fail. The most important word in Sales and Operations Planning is “AND”, and the only person who can put the “AND” between Sales and Operations is the executive.

Once you accept the fact that the senior executive needs to be committed, you are ready to face the real questions: How and why not?

How to Get Your Executive On-Board

The major reasons senior executives are not committed to the S&OP process are that they don’t understand the value, they don’t understand their role in the process and they don’t understand the example that they set.

Let’s look at a story of a fictitious president, Tom, who is characteristic of a number of executives whom we have worked with over the years.

Tom paid lip service to S&OP; a checklist item that he wanted the organization to address.

Through the first six months of the S&OP project, Tom attended two Executive S&OP meetings. There always seemed to be something else competing for his time. One of my associates involved in the project recognized the problem. He said:

“I know the meetings aren’t that effective yet, but if you don’t show up, they aren’t going to get any better.

There were some important decisions bypassed in the last meeting because you weren’t there.

If you want to make S&OP work you need to show up. If not, scrap it now and stop wasting everyone’s time.”

The next meeting was a watershed:

• Building the inventory would mean missing the quarter end inventory targets.

• Not building the inventory would mean not being able to meet the forecast demand in the busy season.

• Sales wanted the inventory, Materials didn’t

Tom saw that it was his call. He finally understood why he had to be there.

Six months later, I attended one of Tom’s Executive S&OP meetings. The meeting took 90 minutes, everyone was prepared, they made critical decisions and everyone left the room understanding the plan.

The Keys to Executive Engagement

So what are the keys to getting the Toms of the world engaged? Here are a few tips we have learned through the years:

1. Make sure the CEO understands his or her role in the S&OP process.

• They must support the process and hold people accountable for doing the grunt work and also make the important decisions when there are differing opinions about the direction.

2. Manage the expectations.

• S&OP does not start out as a perfect process.

• If the Executive S&OP meeting is not meaningful in three or four months, you need to re-evaluate your approach, as executives have limited patience.

3. Use an outside party (probably a consultant) as an advisor to the CEO.

• This is a new role for the CEO, and for many, it’s hard to accept training from their staff.

• For many of the staff, it is hard to give constructive input to the CEO. This is one of the key roles of an outside consultant.

4. Make sure the Executive S&OP meeting is efficient.

• Some of the common traps that will turn off the CEO include:

  
  

  • Not having the presentation ready ahead of time. Most CEOs like to have the data at least a day in advance so they can review it and prepare their questions.

• Having erroneous data. The owners need to be able to support their numbers. This is the function of the pre-S&OP meeting. It’s a dress rehearsal intended to make sure the stories are aligned and valid.

• Too much detail. You went through a lot of data to prepare for the Executive S&OP meeting and must resist the temptation to show it all.

• Getting side tracked. The Executive S&OP meeting is one of the few meetings where the management team gets together. People are tempted to bring up their burning issues even if they don’t apply to S&OP. Should we lease that new office space downtown? Which logo do you like better? S&OP Coordinator, step in please!

• Forgetting the decisions made as a result of the CEO’s presence. It’s good to start the meeting with a list of the decisions made last month. This review will reinforce the importance of the meeting.

So here’s the deal. You want your CEO’s support? Make it worth their time. If it’s valuable, they, like Tom, will come to depend on the S&OP process.

Build a Strong, Future‑Ready S&OP Process

An effective S&OP process aligns your teams, empowers leaders to make confident decisions, and drives measurable business results. Our emPPPower program provides the structure, tools, and hands‑on support you need to build a sustainable process—every step of the way.

Take the next step to transform your business and emPPPower your team