Sales and Operations Planning for Demand Alignment Training Course

Course overview

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) fails when sales forecasts, production capacity, inventory policies and financial targets are reviewed in separate meetings with different assumptions. The result is familiar: demand plans that cannot be supplied, expedites that erode margin, excess stock in slow-moving lines, and leadership teams making commitments without a single agreed version of the plan. This course gives participants a disciplined monthly planning method for aligning commercial opportunity with operational and financial feasibility.

Participants learn how to design and run the core S&OP cycle: data preparation, demand review, supply review, pre-S&OP reconciliation and executive decision-making. They work with forecast accuracy, bias, demand variability, capacity constraints, inventory projections, scenario modelling and exception-based escalation. The course shows how to translate product, customer and regional demand signals into an aggregate plan, evaluate supply and capacity options, quantify trade-offs, and present decisions using a concise executive S&OP pack.

Delivery combines instructor-led explanation with worked calculations, planning templates, group decision workshops and a multi-period business case. Participants build an S&OP operating model for a simulated business, including a meeting calendar, KPI scorecard, demand-supply gap analysis, scenario log and executive decision brief. They leave with practical templates that can be adapted to their own product portfolio, planning horizon and governance structure.

The programme is suited to professionals who contribute data, analysis or decisions to the demand-and-supply planning process, as well as managers responsible for establishing a more reliable cross-functional planning cadence.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map an end-to-end monthly S&OP cycle with defined inputs, outputs, decision rights and meeting cadence
• Calculate forecast accuracy, forecast bias, demand variability and service-performance measures from planning data
• Build an aggregate demand plan using product-family, customer and regional demand assumptions
• Evaluate supply feasibility through capacity, inventory, lead-time and constraint analysis
• Create demand-supply gap scenarios that quantify revenue, service, margin and working-capital trade-offs
• Design a KPI scorecard covering forecast quality, inventory, capacity, service and plan adherence
• Facilitate pre-S&OP reconciliation using exception thresholds, assumptions logs and escalation rules
• Produce an executive S&OP decision pack with recommendations, scenarios, risks and required approvals

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Demand Planners — who must turn market signals and sales inputs into a credible demand plan
• Supply Chain Managers — who need to balance customer demand with inventory, capacity and supplier constraints
• Operations Managers — who must make feasible production and resource commitments against changing demand
• Sales Managers — who provide pipeline intelligence and need to understand the operational consequences of commercial commitments
• Production Planners — who convert aggregate plans into capacity and material planning actions
• Finance Business Partners — who need to reconcile volume, revenue, margin and working-capital assumptions in planning decisions

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should be comfortable reading basic business data such as sales history, inventory balances, production capacity and simple profit-and-loss measures. Familiarity with spreadsheets, particularly Microsoft Excel formulas, filters and charts, is expected because exercises use planning tables and scenario calculations. Experience in demand planning, production planning, sales operations, procurement or finance is useful but not essential. This is a foundation-to-intermediate course: prior experience running formal S&OP meetings, using ERP or advanced planning systems, statistical forecasting software, optimisation models or Power BI is not required. Complete beginners should expect to work with operational data and practical numerical exercises throughout the week.

Training methodology

The programme uses short instructor-led modules followed by spreadsheet-based planning exercises and facilitated cross-functional workshops. Participants analyse sales history, demand assumptions, inventory positions and capacity limits in a running manufacturing-and-distribution case. Teams conduct a demand review, supply review and pre-S&OP meeting, then defend recommendations in an executive S&OP simulation. The instructor demonstrates practical use of Excel and Power BI planning views while relating the process to SAP IBP and Kinaxis RapidResponse workflows. On the final day, each participant prepares an application plan for improving one planning cycle, metric or governance gap in their workplace.

Course outline

Day 1: S&OP foundations and operating model

• Purpose of S&OP versus forecasting, master planning and sales pipeline management
• The five-step monthly S&OP cycle and its required decision gates
• Product-family aggregation and planning-horizon design
• Roles, accountabilities and decision rights across sales, operations, supply chain and finance
• Single-set-of-numbers principles and assumption management
• S&OP maturity assessment and common failure modes
• Design of an S&OP meeting calendar, input schedule and output pack

Workshop: Participants map the current-state planning process for a case organisation and produce a proposed S&OP governance calendar with accountable owners.

Day 2: Demand planning and forecast quality

• Demand history cleansing, outlier treatment and event annotation
• Baseline forecasts and judgemental forecast overrides
• Forecast accuracy using MAD, MAPE and weighted error measures
• Forecast bias measurement and corrective action thresholds
• Demand segmentation by volume, variability and commercial importance
• Sales pipeline conversion, promotions and market-intelligence inputs
• Demand review agenda and consensus-demand approval rules

Workshop: Using a multi-product sales dataset, participants calculate forecast accuracy and bias, identify exceptions, and produce a consensus demand review pack.

Day 3: Supply, capacity and inventory reconciliation

• Translating aggregate demand into supply requirements
• Rough-cut capacity planning and bottleneck identification
• Inventory projection using opening stock, receipts, demand and safety-stock targets
• Lead-time, minimum-order-quantity and supplier-capacity constraints
• Available options: overtime, subcontracting, prebuild, allocation and demand shaping
• Service-level impacts of constrained supply decisions
• Supply review outputs, risks and escalation criteria

Workshop: Participants build a supply plan for the case business, identify capacity and inventory gaps, and document feasible response options.

Day 4: Scenario planning and executive S&OP decisions

• Demand-supply gap analysis by product family and planning period
• Best-case, base-case and downside scenario construction
• Financial reconciliation of volume, revenue, gross margin and working capital
• Exception-based management and tolerance thresholds
• Pre-S&OP reconciliation meeting structure
• Executive S&OP decision categories and approval authorities
• Risk registers, assumption logs and decision follow-through

Workshop: Teams run a pre-S&OP reconciliation workshop and produce three quantified scenarios with a recommended executive decision.

Day 5: Performance management and workplace implementation

• S&OP KPI hierarchy: forecast, service, inventory, capacity and financial measures
• Plan adherence and root-cause analysis for performance variances
• Dashboard design in Microsoft Excel and Power BI
• Using SAP Integrated Business Planning and Kinaxis RapidResponse in the S&OP process
• Data governance, master-data ownership and version control
• S&OP maturity roadmap and change-management actions
• Ninety-day implementation planning and stakeholder engagement

Workshop: Participants present an executive S&OP pack and complete a 90-day workplace implementation plan covering metrics, governance and first-cycle actions.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, SAP Integrated Business Planning, Kinaxis RapidResponse

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions