Learn more - Sales & Operations Planning
Company's nerve center for coordinating actions
Efficiency and fast responses require coordination across functions and teams. Otherwise, the company will be slow, suffer from both excess and shortages as different parts of the company will do conflicting things.
Divide and conquer
Planning needs to resolve and synchronize very different questions ranging from long-term, e.g. product roadmap or factory footprint, to short-term, e.g. production sequencing. Planning set-up needs to break these questions to relevant parts, define what each part is responsible for deciding, and how they should link to other parts.
Process and discipline
Planning is teamwork: company wins together, or it loses together. Processes with clear outputs and dead-lines and discipline to follow them help keep planning light and responsive, especially in complex organizations and fast businesses.
Make it efficient before you need it
Planning should spend minimal time on business-as-usual to be ready to go the extra mile when surprises happen. Processes and efficiency should be constantly refined instead of letting them consume all the time and energy that is available in times of calm.