Now in its 12th year, the Best of the Best S&OP Conference is renowned as a global gathering of the brightest minds in the industry. The Best of the Best S&OP Conference presented by ASCM and the Institute of Business Forecasting and Planning (IBF) is the leading educational and networking event for professionals in the field. The educational sessions presented here in Chicago will cover a range of in-depth topics to help you implement or improve S&OP within your organization.
At the event, you will learn to:
• Effectively use forecasting and demand planning in your S&OP process
• Employ integrated business planning techniques
• Enhance collaboration across sales, marketing, finance and supply chain
• Extend S&OP outside your organization and throughout the supply chain
• Manage and mitigate risk
• Use S&OP to enhance new product launches
• And so much more
Completion of this event is eligible for Continuing Education (CE) credit and maintenance towards your accounting, supply chain, analytics, ASCM, and IBF certifications. Contact us for details.
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Conference Day 1Jun 13, 2019
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Conference Day 2Jun 14, 2019
S&OP has been around before the conception of the internet and in terms of its core concepts, not much has changed since then. This is a serious issue for all demand planners and S&OP professionals because your particular market and consumer bases have changed drastically over the last 30-plus years. The problem is not a lack of understanding of existing processes or a lack of results. The problem, rather, is that S&OP and Integrated Business Planning may not keep up with where your business is going, and risks failing to deliver value in an evolving marketplace. In this opening session, we will look at emerging technologies and their potential impacts, current processes and potential gaps, and how all roads lead back to predictive analytics and the value you will add in the future. This presentation is designed to challenge your perceptions, guide you to the sessions at this conference that will benefit you most, and provide you with a solid foundation so you are ready for when AI takes over your S&OP process.
You will learn:
- How S&OP hasn’t adapted to advancements in technology and where your business is going
- How to think about your business going forward, and how delivering value will increasingly rely on predictive analytics
- How to start thinking about laying a foundation so that your business is ready when AI takes over your S&OP process
What is demand planning and how does it differ to forecasting? How does S&OP fit into the overall business planning process? In the world of forecasting and planning, it is not only important to define and clarify these functions, but to also understand their relationships to one another. In this session, you will discover how an effective forecast drives better S&OP and how demand planning’s collaborative approach is a catalyst for effective decision making, both for supply chain and the wider business.
You will learn:
- How the forecasting function of an organization aligns with the demand planning function to support S&OP
- How to identify tactical relationships between forecasting and demand planning, and define steps to support overall strategy
- How common misunderstandings of S&OP cause fractures in your planning process
Demand Planning Consensus meetings are the pivot point of supply chain success because key stakeholders need to agree on a plan for all functions to work towards order fulfilment in synchronicity. That means getting the consensus meetings right, and that requires some careful orchestration. This session will review who should attend, what the agenda should look like, what pre-work needs to be done, how to manage new product launches, and more. This interactive session is a primer for those unfamiliar with the process, as well as being a thought provoking session to help experienced demand planners and managers tune up their processes with best practices. You’ll come away with the knowledge to integrate Finance, Sales and Marketing insight into the demand plan, as well as POS data, econometrics and weather – and crucially build a framework to pass the information to the relevant parts of the business so all functions are singing from the same hymn sheet. This is the cornerstone of S&OP – come to this session and I’ll show you how to get it right.
You will learn:
- The basic logistics of a consensus meeting – who should attend, facilitate, as well as what the content should look like, including the necessary preparation steps beforehand
- How to integrate different internal points of influence over the demand plan (Sales, Marketing and Finance)
- What a typical consensus output looks like and how to pass information to supply planning/S&OP
One of the main reasons S&OP launches fail is lack of ongoing support from executives.Getting their support for a new process is critical for its success and managing their expectations and involvement can be a huge challenge.Forward-thinking companies recognize that implementing a well-functioning S&OP process is instrumental to operational success. But to achieve successful S&OP you need everyone on board, starting at the top. In this session, we will discuss how to get executives on board and stay on board. This includes aligning planning operations with the organizational goals to achieve a more accurate strategic decision-making process within the business. We will also focus on the importance of change management and ongoing oversight of an S&OP process to align with growth and cross functional collaboration.
You will learn:
- The essential role of the executive in successful S&OP planning and implementation
- How to engage your executive with the S&OP business case and your S&OP plans
- How to encourage a change in mindset to build a culture capable of delivering truly transformational improvements
Managing new product launch processes are essential to your company’s growth, but demand error for new products is high. How do you mitigate the risk of new product launches and ensure maximum probability of success? Innovation is one of the few tools companies can use to adapt to new patterns of consumer behavior, while improving top and bottom line performance. As such, a well-designed new product introduction process needs to keep the consumer in mind every step of the way. In this session, you will learn how to develop new strategies for today’s competitive markets and implement best practices for product planning. This includes leveraging the portfolio management review to better understand new product performance and better manage new products once released.
You will learn:
- How to implement innovative forecasting techniques for new product launches while maintaining proper visibility in S&OP meetings
- How to help your company drive alignment between the intersection of S&OP with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
- How to leverage the portfolio management review for improved new product forecasting
Presented by
The overall aim of the S&OP process is to be a vehicle for decision making and arrive at a game plan to manage and allocate the firm’s resources to meet the needs of customers and grow the business. A key driver for effective S&OP is demand planning and forecasting, which many companies find extremely challenging. Demand Planning and Forecasting drives the Demand Review meeting. Forecasts must therefore be assessed to ensure that they are realistic and unbiased. Gaps between supply and demand, and between forecasts and plans, must be closed to maximize revenue and profit, whilst risks and opportunities need to be visible to develop corporate strategy. If your team struggles to achieve an effective demand review process driven by accurate forecasts, this session is for you.
You will learn:
- How to develop your forecasting and planning process for better S&OP
- The need for an unconstrained and unbiased demand plan
- Why it is necessary to invest resources to improve your demand planning and forecasting process
With the technology today, there is a tremendous amount of data available, as well as a variety of techniques such as machine learning and data mining to provide unparalleled insight into demand. Understanding how to harness this innovation for more robust planning is not easy, but one thing’s for sure: the technology that we’ve been talking about for years is now here and ready to be implemented in your organization. This session will reveal how to convert the mass of both structured and unstructured data into value-added insight to help improve service, reduce costs, improve inventory management, and increase profits. With a clear action plan, you can accomplish all this and more.
You will learn:
- How to determine when to use judgement or qualitative measures instead of analytics for better planning and forecasting
- Moving beyond the plateau at which supply and demand are balanced
- Developing capability to evaluate unconstrained planning scenarios
The supply review process is the “other half” of the Supply and Demand Balancing process, and is critical for long term management of capacity and inventory. Demand planning offers an unconstrained plan, while the Supply Review arrives at a constrained plan with options for resolution or issues that need to be elevated to a higher level. During this session, we will review the basics of the Supply Review process, while sharing best practices and what should be discussed during the meeting. This will include important metrics, tools, suggested participants, the cadence to keep, and more. With practical takeaways, you will learn how to make the supply process in your own organization as lean and efficient as possible.
You will learn:
- How to develop your supply planning process and supply review for better S&OP
- Cycle timing – should planning and reporting be done in days, weeks or monthly buckets?
- How to leverage the Supply Review for strategic decision making
Scenario planning and dynamic simulation look at changes in key drivers that impact supply, demand, inventory, and other variables. In other words, looking into the future to see how changes across these variables could impact the business. Scenario Planning done well and done constantly gives you the freedom to explore different options before they occur, allowing for better preparation and planning. This dramatically improves the effectiveness of your S&OP process but what tools and methodologies do you need? This session will reveal how to close gaps in strategic and operational planning, highlight risk and opportunities, develop playbooks, and be ready to react to multiple scenarios in order to mitigate such risks.
You will learn:
- How to minimize surprises, ranging from 6 months to 10 years in the future
- How to select and prepare scenarios for an efficient executive S&OP meeting
- How to react to multiple unexpected situations and limit damage to the bottom line
Become a Member of IBF & ASCM and Start Improving Your S&OP Performance Today.
IBF members include well-known company professionals that span a broad array of business sectors. By joining our organization, you can make certain that your company sets up the right forecasting & planning process and uses the best techniques available. Moreover, you can be sure that your forecasting and demand planning staff has the proper knowledge and skill set for success.
- A subscription to the Journal of Business Forecasting, which is primarily written by and geared toward practitioners.
- Our Research Reports which include valuable benchmarking information and provide you with eye opening information on various topics in Business Forecasting and Planning.
- Special discounts on our Conferences, Workshops, Training Seminars, Certification Program, as well as on any new products and services we will offer in the future.
- Access to Journal of Business Forecasting Past Articles (FREE)Access to our growing online Knowledge section & Action Templates
- Complimentary 1-day Tutorials at select Global events ($1000 USD Value)
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