SFMF Roundtable
September 5-7, 2007

Sales Forecasting Management Forum--Executive Roundtable University of Tennessee (UTK) Executive Director Paul Dittman, Member Companies and Marketing & Logistics Department Professors
Tom Mentzer, Mark Moon,
Ken Kahn September 5-7, 2007 Knoxville Marriott
Click for More Information

Webcast: August 28, 2007 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum --New Approaches to Sales Forecasting
Dr. John T.( Tom) Mentzer, Bruce Chair of Excellence in Business, Department of Marketing, Logistics and Transportation,
University of Tennessee
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
10AM Pacific, 12 Noon Central,
1PM Eastern
Click to view event detail & enroll

Previous Webcast 7/31 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Implementing a Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment Program
Ron Ireland, Principal,
Oliver Wight Consultants
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast 6/26 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Sales Opportunity Pipeline
—The Missing Link in S&OP?
Matt Merritt, GM and Founder of
MCG International,
and EJ Tavella, VP Solutions, Steelwedge Software, Inc.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
Click for More Information

Previous Webcast 5/8 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- Sales and Operations Planning for Integrated Business Management
George Palmatier, Principal,
Oliver Wight Consultants
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM PDT
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast 4/3 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum -- How to Extend SAP for effective Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP)
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern
Mr. Padman Ramankutty, CEO, Intrigosys, LLC., former CEO and Founder, Bristlecone, Inc.
View Recorded Webcast

Previous Webcast 2/27 --
Best Practices Leadership Forum --S&OP Best Practices:
A Case Study
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
1pm Eastern, 12noon Central,
10am Pacific
Dr. Chris Gopal, Partner,
Deloitte Consulting and former VP Operations Strategy, Dell, Inc.
View Webcast Presentation

Steelwedge Momentum:
Three New S&OP Clients

Spansion, the largest company exclusively focused on Flash
memory solutions.

EDS, a leading global technology
services company delivering
business solutions to its clients.

Honeywell International Inc.
a diversified, technology and manufacturing company,
serving customers worldwide.

Industry Blogs
Here are the Industry Blogs that
we watch, and you might want to:

www.crmblog.org
www.supplychainer.com
www.andyonenterprisesoftware.com
www.siliconvalleywatcher.com
blogs.ittoolbox.com/crm
blogs.ittoolbox.com/supplychain
www.vics.org/blog

Extending SAP for Sales and Operations Planning

Recap of the Steelwedge Best Practices Leadership Forum Webcast, April 3, 2007, with Padman Ramankutty, CEO, Intrigo Systems, LLC.

Sales and Operations Planning is needed now more than ever because the 21st Century marketplace is moving at the speed of light. Changing markets, new technology, contract manufacturing, outsourcing, off-shoring and other factors require a faster, more accurate formal process for corporate decision-making to balance demand and supply, understand product volume and mix, establish a forward-looking monthly cadence that links strategic planning to tactical detail.

The successful enterprise with an effective S&OP process will have better customer service, lower inventories, shorter fulfillment times, stable manufacturing, clear visibility and clear communications. It will be able to out-maneuver it’s competition in distributed manufacturing and global product launches.

Many major organizations have invested in SAP R3 which has a very robust transaction execution environment. R3 and BW can have statistical info structures and cubes to source planning and transaction data. The SAP business suite has many different planning applications--

• R3 : Demand Management and MRP
• APO: Components to do Demand Planning and Supply planning
• SEM: Does Financial Planning
• BW : Analytical data
• X apps
• Industry specific planning environments are found in Retail, AFS
  and Oil & Gas.

But, users have to make trade-offs with each of these environments, and the maturity of your SAP environment will affect the S&OP process. The S&OP process improves with clear and timely data from your systems

• Transaction Data ( work orders, purchase orders, Sales orders)
• Planning Data ( Units, $, Volume, Mix, Time Series) S&OP works well as long as the process is maintained, and S&OP can be instantiated in all of SAP environments not just the latest.

Here are three different S&OP-SAP environment situations:

• Using SOP Xapps from SAP--
  • Newest of SAP tools
  • xSOP is created as a separate tool
  • Assumes NW integration layer
  • Leverages SCM and BW along with ERP2005
  • Specific dashboards and KPI
  • Includes Process and document management
  • Disaggregation
    
    
• If you have SCM deployed--
  • Uses APO DP and SNP to achieve S&OP
  • Process models not followed
  • Aggregation allowed
  • Financial metrics not included- can be added
  • Sequential planning model
  • Reporting always on BW
    
    
• R/3 and Planning
  • R/3 and ERP 2005 base systems use Planning in Demand management
  • Sales, Purchasing and Manufacturing transactions can be captured in either LIS or BW info cubes
  • KPI and Calculated fields can be added to LIS structures
  • Rules can be utilized to calculate KPI
  • UI and navigation are not feasible for process work

And, there are at least six challenges with the S&OP-SAP environment

• Most SAP environments are R3 4.6C based
• BW has been the most common reporting platform
• Most SOP process includes users from non- SAP environments
• A common UI model is needed to communicate
• Most SOP processes occur today with Reports from MRP,
  Purchasing, Sales and Finance
• Base R3 environments need strong LIS skills to meet SOP
  information to combine Planning data and transaction data

Then, there are the challenges of customer channels and managing inventory

• Proliferation of Customer channel (Internet, Retail & Wholesale)
• Product launches occur simultaneously
• Distribution Channels are increasing
• Outsourced manufacturing and maintenance
• Forward positioning of inventory

So today’s S&OP process requires a combination of capabilities and functionality which is not completely available in an ERP system. As a result, there continues to be a strong demand for functionally rich, best of breed applications to complement a company’s ERP investment. In particular, there are several functional and process requirements that are best met using Best of Breed solutions including: easy-to-use interface to facilitate collaborative planning, sales forecasting and planning solutions, new product and end-of-life planning, supplier collaboration solutions, pricing, revenue and margin planning systems, user configurable workflow solutions, and performance management capabilities.

To demonstrate the importance of accurate, timely information in the 21st Century marketplace that demands an effective S&OP process, consider the following company profile and functional requirements described in the following case study:

• Large Manufacturer using multiple streams of Demand data from Wholesale , Retail and internet
• Seasonal products that are completely changed out every 3 months
  with new products
• Weekly formalized process that evaluates Shipment, Inventory, Receipts and Invoices in one dashboard
• Evaluates request based and ship based metrics to satisfy customers
• Looks across multiple time horizons
• Uses a common platform (excel component based- data sourced from R3, BW and i2)
• Single model to look at planning and transaction data across technology platforms
• Process is highly formalized and has yielded significant reduction in fulfillment times and customer metrics

While an ERP system alone is designed to provide a strong transactional base, with some planning capabilities, it typically lacks the functional depth and flexibility to address an increasingly complex set of functional requirements. To successfully manage an increasingly complex set of requirements as described above, a company will certainly require a Best of Breed approach that complements a strong ERP transactional solution.

About the Author:

Founded in 2006 by Padman Ramankutty, formerly CEO of Bristlecone Inc., IntrigoSystems provides (1) Advisory services to CIOs and COOs focused on SOA, SCM/Operational Performance management, including Enterprise Roadmaps and Technology Strategy, and (2) New Product development services to startups. At Bristlecone, Ramankutty founded a business process and technology consulting company with proven expertise solving high-impact value-chain issues that involved the movement of information, materials and money across an extended enterprise.