Sales and Operations Planning

The cycle is a sequence of reviews, not a single meeting. Demand planners produce an unconstrained forecast, supply and production test it against capacity, materials and lead times, finance translates the outcome into revenue and margin, and a reconciliation step quantifies the gaps. The executive session then decides what changes – capacity, inventory targets, the promotional calendar or the sales plan itself – and approves one number set for the whole company.

• Demand review – statistical baseline plus market intelligence, promotions and new product plans.
• Supply review – capacity, materials, lead times and distribution constraints tested against that demand.
• Reconciliation – gaps quantified in units and money, with scenarios and a recommendation per gap.
• Executive review – decisions taken, assumptions logged, plan approved.

S&OP is mid‑term and volume‑oriented; Integrated Business Planning (IBP) extends the same discipline to the full P&L and a strategic horizon. Where S&OP underperforms, the cause is rarely the calendar – it is a forecast nobody trusts, capacity data kept in spreadsheets, or an executive meeting with no mandate to change the plan.

S&OP in practice

An S&OP cycle is only as good as the numbers entering it. Veritico STOCK supplies the statistical demand baseline and inventory targets the demand review works from, and the planning cycle itself – owners, cadence, decision rights, KPI – is designed as part of a supply chain management engagement. See also demand forecasting and inventory optimization and capacity planning.

Related terms

• Demand forecasting
• Replenishment
• Safety stock
• Supply chain management (SCM)