What it is

With Infor Sales & Operations Planning, decision-makers achieve consensus on a single operating plan that profitably matches supply and demand, while aligning with executive business goals. Sales & Operations Planning provides a holistic framework for balancing demand with supply and incorporates key financial measures to ensure your operational plan is aligned with your strategic plan to produce the best possible business results.

With multiple "what if" scenarios on both demand and supply, you can identify the best plan to meet your customer service and financial goals, respond more quickly to the changing landscape of demand, and ensure your S&OP process remains strong throughout the business.

Designed for manufacturers and distributors, Sales & Operations Planning works with conventional ERP and supply chain planning systems to deliver information and process support to create a consensus plan among:

• Senior executives
• Demand planning managers
• Production managers

• Inventory managers
• Financial managers

More than 25 years of supply chain management experience is built into Infor Sales & Operations Planning. That's why you can be confident you have a proven solution from industry experts that delivers on its promise.

Across your supply chain, Sales & Operations Planning brings you visibility and insight into all aspects of your demand and supply picture—from forecasts through to actual demand, inventory, production, and supplier plans.

What it does

Infor Sales & Operations Planning closes the gap between operations and strategy. The S&OP system contains pre-configured processes and key performance indicators to create a framework for balancing demand and supply.

With Sales & Operations Planning, you get:

• Demand-supply balancing. Plan your enterprise for any grouping of product, customer, geography, or channel to market to ensure you can meet your demand plan. Plan in units, sales values, or costs—and see the impact on your business.
• "What if" simulations. Run scenarios for various demand and supply profiles and compare "what if" alternatives showing probable financial impact of different strategic, operational, and tactical events. That way, you can align operations with business objectives.
• S&OP process support. Sales & Operations Planning governs your S&OP business process. Embedded task management enforces your process, ensuring tasks are done on time by the right people. You'll also document activities and decisions made, and the system tracks all changes to demand or supply for compliance reporting.  
• Common information repository. Use imported data from multiple sources including demand, inventory, and planned production as a common information system and foundation for deep analysis of your business—from forecast and sales history through to supply.  
• Unit and currency synchronization. Provide a common view of your business with a system that synchronizes the monetary forecast and the unit forecast for better decision-making. Avoid the common and unfortunate scenario where the finance staff view only financial terms of the business and operations staff view only volume of products made and shipped.
• Collaboration network. Use a single platform to synchronize and rationalize your sales and operational forecast across all functional areas: design, supply, operations, marketing, finance, and other stakeholders. Collaborate using one set of data in one place that the system automatically compiles and stores to allow interactive analytics that drive a consensus plan.
• Event alerts. Provide a proactive system enabling the appropriate decision-maker to automatically receive alerts to plan deviations and other events and efficiently make adjustments. Analyze exceptions to determine cause and communicate it to the right people to improve your plan and processes. The workflow drives everyone to review and approve on time.
• Key performance indicator measurement. Continuously review and improve your performance by measuring your progress toward your financial objectives. Track your assumptions made in the course of agreeing to a unified forecast and make continuous improvements.

What it means

You'll have the tools you need to:

• Improve top-line revenue through improved customer fulfillment and bottom-line profitability through better use of your supply resources.
• Respond more swiftly and confidently to changes in your demand-supply performance.
• Create and maintain more accurate operational budgets and track these against business actuals.
• Improve business performance because leaders in S&OP have lower supply chain and operating costs, faster cash-to-cash cycle times, and higher customer service levels.

Sales & Operations Planning helps manufacturers and distributors like you optimize their business processes by better aligning strategic plans and operational execution. You will make decisions confidently based on an enterprise view of your demand, supply, and financial conditions to better serve your customers while protecting your profit.