Cognos unveils new performance solutions to help manufacturers improve sales and operations

Matching product demand with production and supply chain capabilities is a key driver among manufacturers looking to improve business performance in today's dynamic marketplace. Yet, organisations have struggled with their S&OP processes due to a lack of coordinated planning, metrics and reporting across all departments.

The new Cognos Sales and Operations Planning Blueprint enables management to reconcile sales and demand forecasts with supply plans using a single, integrated performance management framework that ensures enterprise-wide alignment.

Users can model and assess the financial impact of supply/demand scenarios to create a multi-plant S&OP view, and then monitor the plan on an ongoing basis using score carding and analytics, making 'right-time' adjustments as needed.

Success ingredients

'As new opportunities arise, manufacturers need to plan quickly and in detail. Success is contingent on a number of ingredients - enterprise-wide integration of systems, ubiquitous information visibility across the supply chain, a strong 'what-if' capability, and deep analytics for comparing outcomes, so management can anticipate the impact of potential actions across business functions,' said Colin Snow, vice-president and research director of operational and supply chain performance management at Ventana Research.

'The Cognos Sales and Operations Planning Blueprint empowers organisations to react quickly to ad-hoc exceptions - like changes in demand, supply, capacity and product - plan effectively and measure the progress of responses against key performance objectives.'

Another significant challenge for manufacturers is the inability to understand and measure the effectiveness of their retail trade promotions, given limited information access and an increasingly complex marketing and promotions mix.

The Cognos Trade Promotion Management Blueprint enables brand and category managers as well as sales executives to evaluate multiple trade promotions scenarios, helping them more effectively plan promotional activities that lead to the greatest sales and margin lift.

'Many manufacturers today are relying on spreadsheets to drive their sales & operations planning and trade promotions management. While they may be passable, short-term fixes at the departmental levels, their localised capabilities fall well short in enabling a consolidated, coordinated, enterprise-wide intelligence that can positively impact an organization's overall performance,' said David Brierley, regional manager, Cognos Middle East and Africa.

'Cognos' new Performance Blueprints provide managers with the information required to effectively assess the trade-offs that are vital to ensuring the right mix of production, outsourced resources and trade promotions to maximize sales effectiveness and meet demand.'

Manufacturing-specific

Anchored on Cognos 8 Planning and Cognos 8 BI, the Cognos Sales & Operations Planning and Trade Promotion Management Blueprints are the first Manufacturing-specific solutions planned by Cognos, and the latest in a series of industry-specific performance solutions to be rolled out this year.

Since January, Cognos has launched Performance Blueprints for retail store operations, retail store development, bank branch performance, pharmaceutical clinical trials and pharmaceutical sample optimization.

Cognos is a recognised leader in delivering performance management solutions for the manufacturing industry. Currently, 19 of the top 20 consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, nine of the top 10 high tech companies, and all of the top 10 automakers use Cognos to improve sales and operations performance, marketing effectiveness, and supply chain management.