solutions for your business challenge sales and operations planning (S&OP)

Increasing Supply Chain Complexity and Volatility Drive Greater Need for Alignment

Supply chain professionals are dealing with enormous pressures. Squeezed between increasing supply chain complexity and unprecedented supply chain volatility, the supply chain management challenges today far exceed those of the past.

It's no surprise then that many organizations are turning to their sales and operations planning (S&OP) process to find answers. It is through this process that organizations align their demand plans, supply plans and all business functions to achieve their desired operations performance results.

But the pressures are mounting and making the desired outcomes ever more difficult. Sales and operations planning processes today are struggling with a variety of challenges, including

• quantity and diversity of demand inputs,
• demand stated in different terms by different input sources (e.g., units vs. revenue),
• collaboration hindered by collection and sharing mediums (the lack of one version of the truth),
• no or limited ability to identify suspect data and rationalize forecasts against other input sources,
• no or limited ability to connect the extended supply chain information to demand inputs and
• no or limited ability to simulate different plan alternatives and compare to key business objectives.

Powering Next Generation Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)

Kinaxis™ RapidResponse™ uniquely meets the needs of today's sales and operations planning process — both in terms of developing the plan and developing rapid and profitable responses to plan deviations as they occur. RapidResponse supports S&OP through solutions for

• revenue and margin planning,
• new product introductions,
• rough cut capacity and constraint planning,
• operations performance monitoring and alerting,
• multi-enterprise supply chain visibility and
• inventory reduction and rationalization.

RapidResponse delivers these solutions by

• aggregating data from across the extended supply chain to ensure that all stakeholders have a single version of the truth,
• simplifying the process of receiving collaborative inputs from all departments in developing a feasible plan,
• proactively monitoring the status of your plan to identify deviations that risk knocking your plan off course,
• providing rapid analysis of plan variations through simulation capabilities accessible to all users and
• enabling front line responders to respond quickly and decisively to ensure your operations performance objectives are still met.

Follow the links to learn how RapidResponse delivers value to your business and value to IT.