Analyst Insight: If supply chains are not planned, then they evolve and often become overly costly, risky and ineffective in serving customers. However, today's dynamic markets require much more than routine planning. Each mega-process in the end-to-end supply chain (Plan, Buy, Make, Move, Distribute and Sell) is undergoing change at an unprecedented rate. Leading solutions lie in advanced planning strategies and methods for both depth and breadth. While today's top companies understand this, the majority are not yet advanced in supply chain planning. – Gene Tyndall, Executive Vice President, Tompkins International

Analyst Insight: Call it Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), Integrated Business Planning (IBP), Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SIOP) or Demand Driven - it doesn't matter. Arduous to implement, these processes continue to under-perform considering the political, operating and capital investment made. Why? In most organizations the daily working capital decisions are made by planners and schedulers using custom spreadsheets and tribal knowledge. It's time to transform the process, and let's call it S&OP 3.0. – Rich Sherman, author and founder at Gold & Domas Research

Analyst Insight: Sales and operations planning (S&OP) has been evolving for over three decades; its most recent iteration is Integrated Business Planning (IBP). While many companies struggle to derive full value from S&OP/IBP, those that excel at it have gone beyond simply balancing supply and demand. Their IBP processes support better, faster and more profit-focused decisions and liberate untapped profit potential at key points in the supply chain. – Jim Snyder, Managing Director, and Brad Householder, Partner, PwC Advisory Practice

Analyst Insight: Supply chain management ... the words are a freely exchanged contemporary coin of the realm. Yet reality has fallen short of promise because of anachronistic functional silos, presided over by vice presidents who fiercely defend their worn-out turf with an endless stream of misguided initiatives. Sales and operations planning (S&OP) was designed to bash these barriers, but it, too, has fallen short because of overmatched implementation technology. Fortunately, there is a readily available solution. – Jeff Karrenbauer, president & co-founder, INSIGHT Inc.

Analyst Insight: Although sales and operations planning has been a formalized practice since the 1980s, companies still struggle to effectively implement S&OP as both sales and operations become more fragmented. Based on the successes of multiple multibillion-dollar organizations, Blue Hill provides the following recommendations for companies still finding it difficult to effectively start an S&OP program. – Hyoun Park, Chief Research Officer at Blue Hill Research

Analyst Insight: Sales and operations planning is almost sacred to those who have it, but still fuzzy to those who don't. Those who do, cannot imagine running their business without it, while those who don’t, are still debating the merits and are not clear about the value. Whether you have it and are looking for tips to improve, or are seriously considering but yet unsure, read on. - Bryan Ball, Vice President and Group Director, Supply Chain and Operations Practices, Aberdeen Group