Overview

Driving collaboration in practice!

Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is back on the radar for many companies. A key business process, S&OP links an organisation’s corporate strategic plan with daily operations plans and also balances demand and supply. While S&OP is easy to understand, implementation is not just about getting the technical aspects right.
 
The central driver of S&OP is human behavior and involves many complex social interactions. Managers from different areas with very different incentives, (which create intentional functional biases), have to work together towards a common goal and break down longstanding functional silos. Unintentional biases are at play as well. If the financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that individuals and teams do not act in a rational way, but are subject to what is called ‘bounded rationality’. This means that while people intend to make rational decisions, and typically strongly believe they are doing so, cognitive limitations and emotional factors subconsciously negatively affect decision making capabilities. These unintentional biases are the reason why the realities of human behavior must be part of S&OP tools, methods and frameworks.
 
If you want to develop or improve your S&OP process, and get the insights and tools to succeed, this workshop might just be what you need.

Participants in this programme will learn to: 

• Understand what hinders and what drives collaboration in the S&OP process 
• Align KPIs and incentives in the S&OP process to support the business strategy 
• Recognise the unconscious biases in supply chain decision making and harness themselves against them 
• Devise an improvement plan for supply chain management team decision making 
• Apply the latest insights from empirical research and real life examples.