Planning Platform Selection Best Practice Guide
- Completeness of vision: the degree of alignment with Gartner’s view of future requirements development (i.e. future-proofed)
- e.g. Leaders & Visionaries are highly aligned with Gartner’s view, Challengers and Niche Players are not
- Ability to execute: the vendor’s organisational delivery capability, for example, taking into account client support structure and track record
- e.g. Challengers & Leaders have a high ability to executive whereas niche players and visionaries may successfully focus on a particular segment but don’t have as broad scale
| Maturity level | Priority capabilities |
| 1: Limited process integration within supply chain functions (e.g. planning, warehousing, distribution) | Demand forecasting / planning |
| 2: Established process integration within supply chain functions | Demand and supply planning |
| 3: Cross-functional process integration beyond supply chain (e.g. including commercial, finance, production & procurement) | Cross-functional enterprise planning to support S&OP / IBP (and S&OE) |
| 4: External collaboration with Tier 1 partners (i.e. suppliers and customers) | Multi-enterprise / collaborative planning |
| 5: End-to-end / multi-tier external collaboration | Advanced analytics, decision support / predictive analytics & automation |
| Planning horizon | Capability checklist |
Long-term (>18 months) |
|
| Medium-term i.e. S&OP/IBP (3-24 months) |
|
| Short-term i.e. S&OE (0-3 months) |
|
General / cross-horizon ‘Best in class’ or end-to-end planning platforms align planning decisions at different levels of granularity, across different time horizons and across the end-to-end (i.e. multi-echelon) supply chain. |
|
- Industry sector expertise & experience
- Cost & pricing model
- Ease of integration with ERP / other data sources
- User interface (UI) / adoption
- Time & effort to implement
- Flexibility / customisability
- Scalability
- Extensibility / modularity
- Future-proofed / ongoing vendor research investment into the core technology & capabilities
- Balance of vendor investment between pre-sales and implementation support
- Cost of ongoing SaaS development
- General market (i.e. vendor independent) capability to support implementation, customisations or improvements
- Cyber security
| Platform type | Pros | Cons |
| Dedicated | Top of the range capability Future-proofed Good support | Expensive Long implementation Need ERP integration |
| Flexible | Flexible / customisable Fast implementation Expandable | Require extensive configuration Blank canvas Need ERP integration |
| Integrated ERP | Little or no data preparation More than adequate for less complex supply chains | Not cutting edge technology Expensive UI often not intuitive |
| Off-the-shelf (OTS) | Fast implementation Competitive pricing Good user adoption / training | Limited capability Needs ERP integration |
- Dedicated: fully focused and designed for supply chain optimisation. Dedicated platforms typically have state-of-the art capability and substantial ongoing investment into research and development. Often, they are structured around industry verticals and so can leverage the collective experience and best practices from similar businesses. Although this can offer some 'plug and play' templates that can help improve current processes, this may be offset by greater complexity leading to longer implementations;
- Flexible: platforms that are able to support planning but are more flexible in terms of their design and configuration. Limited applications like proofs of concepts can be implemented relatively quickly and then be progressively expanded to deliver a very high level of capability, comparable to dedicated platforms. The comparatively 'blank canvas' approach offers high customisability although there often isn't as much in terms of out-of-the-box templates so tend to work well for organisations with well defined and mature processes;
- Integrated ERP: most ERP systems have planning modules which may not match dedicated platforms for capability or be as flexible but usually (but not always) should be easier to implement as they require less data cleansing and integration work;
- Off-the-shelf: allow for little or no customisation and typically offer less capability than dedicated platforms but, if data is available, tend to be faster to implement at lower cost.
| << | OTS | ERP | Flexible | Dedicated | >> |
| <<Low | Planning maturity / capability needs Change momentum Current data quality / complexity | High>> |
- Planning maturity / capability needs: as highlighted above, platforms with greater capability and expense ought to have a commensurate degree of maturity to get the most from the investment. At lower levels of maturity, there is less risk associated with taking smaller steps with simpler but easier to adopt technology. Higher levels of planning maturity are also associated with more advanced capabilities such as multi-enterprise collaboration;
- Change momentum: this is really a grouping of several factors:
- willingness to change
- impetus: without a ‘burning platform’ i.e. a clear consensus on why the status quo is unsustainable, members have found it very difficult to generate the buy-in or momentum to support significant investment into planning capabilities;
- transformation vision & roadmap clarity: a common inhibitor has been a lack of confidence about the ultimate destination and the best route to get there, especially when budgets are tight and mis-steps are possibly career-defining;
- ability to change
- uniformity: the more uniform a business, the more likely it is that investments in planning capability will have larger-scale returns;
- change capability: a combination of the necessary skills, time and energy able to be dedicated to implementing and embedding new processes and technologies;
- Data quality & complexity: in general, the better the current quality of data, the more likely that any type of planning platform choice will be successful but this is rarely the case so the question is what to do if current data quality is poor? Similarly, off-the-shelf and ERP-based platforms are less likely to be able to handle complex data sets. Member experience has clearly shown that the amount of data work should not be underestimated so, given this, the choice seems to come down to how much work is involved and how likely it is that you might have to do that work all over again if, a few years down the road, you want to move to a different platform.
A recurrent theme: the ‘soft’ challenges around ownership, buy-in, behavioural change and adherence are often the trickiest;
A common assumption is that sticking with an incumbent technology provider should make transition and integration easier but that often not the case, even though some incumbents seem to be overly relying on this assumption;
It was noted that some ‘next gen’ platforms seem more mature than others, including some of the bigger names. This is often notable by whether or not the vendor is able and willing to perform a live demo using sample customer data and the extent to which capability is already built or on the development roadmap;
Multiple platforms are being used for different aspects of planning and, generally, they serve their purpose well, often supported by some in-house developed solutions. However, the interfaces between those systems is a persistent challenge which makes getting reliable output a real challenge;
For those with experience of ‘next-gen’ tools, there has clearly been an improvement in forecasting capability, not least as a collaborative platform where commercial and planning can come together to enrich the forecast;
There is still a role for more traditional, univariate statistical models to play, particularly for some demand profiles;
Business units who already had a good grasp of price and promo data have seen much bigger improvements than those without demand driver intelligence;
Lessons learned on implementation include that it pays to have a clear PMO structure and different main roles with ‘super users’ training the trainers, data scientists improving the algorithms and innovative approaches and the planning analysts who run the routines, identify and handle the exceptions and outliers;
‘Next-gen’ platforms have certainly helped improve and embed best practice planning processes but leadership is critical to that and, also, the perception of it being a business / IBP process and not just a ‘supply chain thing’.
Top SC Planning Best Practices...Digested
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