Blinkers?
While you are tackling the day to day routine of crises, meetings, strategy and more crises while fending off the results pressure from global/regional HQ, you can lose a grip on the reality of how your company is operating. Creeping inefficiency can become the norm as you are so engrossed in driving the business forward and rightly focussed on the longer term.
The local company culture could be so strong that you might only appreciate this from an outside perspective. This is rather like an executive who leaves a company for pastures new and only then can see how operational inefficiency was directly contributing to unhealthy stress. You need to take an unbiased view of the reality with which you are attempting to continually delight FMCG customers and consumers.
Testing, testing 123
Take this simple test from your perspective as a CEO, GM or MD and get a reality snapshot of your company Sales & Operational Planning (S&OP) health and efficiency. Do you need an S&OP revamp or possibly a full re-set?
Does your organisation suffer from the following symptoms?
| Yes | No | Don't know | ||
| 1 | Poor business results. Consistent under-delivery against commitments even after the targets have been adjusted downwards. | |||
| 2 | Poor Customer Service. Unhappy Traditional Trade and Key Account customers. | |||
| 3 | Poor communication. Silo behaviours and begrudging and usually late, cross-functional cooperation. | |||
| 4 | Myopia. Short-term departmental targets override wider business objectives. | |||
| 5 | Financial mis-focus. More than 1 set of monthly target numbers. | |||
| 6 | Overstocking. Excess stock in DCs yet out of stock on shelves. | |||
| 7 | Tardy innovation. Delays to NPD and relaunch roll out. Misalignment of stock availability and market activation - on air but no stock on shelves. | |||
| 8 | Financial stress. Poor working capital control and just in time cash flow. | |||
| 9 | Tolerating wastef. A culture that tolerates frequent write-off and waste. | |||
| 10 | Blamestorming. A circular firing squad is the modus operandi. |
Honesty is always the best policy. If you answered “yes” to all 10 questions, then very well done but I bet you didn’t! The likelihood is that there is a sprinkling of “no” and “don’t know” answers. If you fall into this category then you are staring at an opportunity wholly within your direct control and in your own personal and corporate interest.
You can find out more about S&OP here. If you feel an external perspective would be wise then a Walk Through of your company S&OP deployment would be inexpensive when you consider the speed and size of the pay-back in top and bottom line improvement, employee engagement and job satisfaction.
Help! I need somebody.
If you have any Supply Chain or Route to Market problems or opportunities you would like to discuss then please reach out to Enchange.com via telephone, email, or live chat.
