Align Finance, Sales, And Marketing For Supply Chain Success

Thanks to all of you who helped with the research for The Forrester Tech Tide™: Smart Supply Chain, Q4 2021, our latest report about the maturity and business value of supply chain applications. Our survey told us that integrated business planning (IBP) is eclipsing sales and operations planning (S&OP) as companies are looking to make their supply chains more resilient. IBP offers the tempting promise of both streamlining inventory in the distribution network and enabling superior customer service. But IBP implementations also place greater demands on organizations than S&OP implementations, as Henkel recently explained. However, aligning sales, marketing, and finance leadership is a prerequisite to success as supply chains evolve to become collaborative supply networks that help enterprises to:

  • Satisfy new resilience imperatives. Last year, we described the evolution from rigid and brittle supply chains to more resilient and collaborative supply networks. This year, we published research on the growing importance of supply chain resilience and risk management. There is also a tool that you can use to benchmark your supply chain’s resilience against those of your peers.
  • Achieve new sustainability goals. Companies have no choice but to embrace sustainability to build trust and gain a new competitive advantage. As a result, our clients are busy restructuring sourcing and supply chains to meet the rising sustainability demands from consumers, from sources of finance, and from regulators.
  • Deploy new multichannel supply chain strategies. Most brands and consumer packaged goods companies operate direct-to-consumer channels or use marketplaces to connect with their customers. For example, automotive OEM service dealers and vehicle owners today interact through digital as well as conventional channels. Just like other multichannel businesses, their IBP manages demand signals and predictive variables for each type of customer across channels. IBP helps them to dynamically configure the best supply network nodes to service-changing customer demand. It also helps finance and sales teams jointly bet on the best local depth and breadth of products for prompt customer service and compelling choice.

To experience and hear more about our supply chain research, join us online for the Forrester Technology & Innovation EMEA forum.