Last year, I had a lot of conversations with supply chain professionals about S&OP topics. Every day, their main drive and goal is to make ‘the unpredictable, predictable’.
That is the promise of supply chain planning professionals to their colleagues inside and outside their company. ‘And’, is what they say to their colleagues, ‘the only think we ask for is you to provide us with the correct and accurate data’. This is the point where the supply chain planning professionals overload especially their sales colleagues with questions concerning collecting data. And before you know it, the sales colleagues are frustrated because they have to collect so many data they cannot do what they would like to do and what they are hired for: selling.
What would you do? Agreeing on doing that one thing you don’t like and don’t care about: collecting data? As a salesperson, you are interested in selling as much as possible, as fast as possible and the products should always be available at any time and at any place.
There is an old law in the psychology: always think and work from the perspective of the person you have to deal with. The mean driver for everybody always is ‘what’s in it for me?’ Don’t you act like that yourself? Of course, everybody does. The amount of time and energy you should spend to collect right and accurate data must be in balance with the output.
Sales & operations planning requires leadership, organization, communication, tooling and yes data. As a supply chain planning leader, your message to sales is rather simple: ‘please, trust us, we are supply chain planning professionals, with our knowledge, our experience and our tooling we will manage the baseline. But, sales, we need your help in case of unacceptable risks, isn’t it?’
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