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Improve Your S&OP Process
Take the Free S&OP Assessment
Receive a custom report that outlines how you can achieve a great S&OP process in your organization.

An organization’s Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process should be a clear, decision-making process and improve business processes, not be a drain on resources with no results.
Get a clear pathway to success that is tailored to your current organization’s Sales and Operations Planning state. Whether you have a mature process or need a clear foundation to begin, start with the S&OP Assessment to drive results.
Based on 35 years of consulting expertise, DBM Systems consultants have been helping businesses run their processes more effectively. The S&OP Assessment is based on the assessment used with past clients to help client improve their process through the S&OP Accelerator.
There are eight critical criteria that are the benchmark for an effective S&OP process:
Critical Area | Criteria |
---|---|
Measurements | S&OP should deliver results like improved customer service, reduced expedited freight, right-sized inventory. Before you get results, you need to make sure you are doing the right things (a good process) and the right things are being done right (effectively). |
Supporting Data | The S&OP process pulls data from your ERP system. Note: If the data is bad, S&OP should highlight that a data clean-up needs to happen. Actual historical data (bookings, shipments, aged backlog, production) is used to evaluate the performance to plan. |
Responsibility and Accountability | Accountability (who the executive is expecting to deliver the results) and responsibility (who has to get it done) for the plan is clearly defined and documented. |
Executive Engagement | The person running the business uses the Executive S&OP meeting as a critical management meeting. They attend and/or run the meeting, hold the team accountable, and sign off on the S&OP plans. |
Meeting Cycle | The monthly process is regular and purposeful: a plan is created, then executed, results are assessed, then next month, the plan is redone or adjusted. The monthly cadence supports accountability and forward planning across the planning horizon. |
Planning Horizon | Since S&OP is a forward-looking process, it needs to support planning far enough out in the future to support both execution and strategy. |
Family Structure | The business is segmented into the right elements to support decision making. All the decisions (flow rate, buffers, accountability) are set by family. |
Executive Presentation | As the culmination of the monthly process, the Executive Presentation – where the decisions are being made – is where the executive intersects with the process (prior to this being run by other resources). The structure and format must provide a clear “story” for the business (by family) in the past, present and future with supporting data. |
We have helped our clients effectively implement change through the S&OP Accelerator. Using the S&OP Assessment as a key to measure results, our clients have seen how they have progressed to a successful and sustainable S&OP process.
Here are some kind words from our past clients:
"I can't say enough about the results. The process change was immediately accepted and has become one of the pillars of our management activities. Your assistance in re-launching our S&OP process has permanently changed our business for the better."
Eric Smith
Vice President Supply Chain
InSinkErator

Use the S&OP Assessment to see what you can do to achieve an effective process in your organization:
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