To Achieve Profit Maximization, Eliminate The Silos And Coordinate Plans Across Both Marketing And Operations
INSIGHT, Inc., a top international provider of supply chain planning solutions for the world's foremost companies, raises the strategic planning bar once again. For the first time in history, marketing initiatives, including both cost and demand impact, are unified with the entire supply chain in a single analytical tool, Insight Enterprise Strategy (IES). To maximize profit, companies must establish true cross functional planning and execution processes. Far too often, however, silo management is the norm. IES is a powerful tool for breaking down these walls.
"Currently, in most organizations, supply chain executives and marketing managers plan independently, often negatively impacting corporate goals and, ultimately, customers," said Jeff Karrenbauer, president and co-founder of INSIGHT, Inc. "A firm can realize sustained competitive advantage and maximize profits only when corporate financial goals are directly and firmly linked to a single cross-functional plan." Unfortunately, according to a recent Gartner study, many CEOs struggle to connect their strategic vision with execution. Again, the primary culprit is typically silo management.
"Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is the current cross-functional planning practice," added Karrenbauer. "Once per month marketing and operations sit down, argue, and ultimately reconcile their spreadsheet differences. However, IES goes far beyond even the most advanced S&OP tools, eliminating the many inherent weaknesses of that process. It is also far more sophisticated than the simple financial models that form the backbone of many of the current business process management offerings."
Using a powerful mathematical optimization engine, IES identifies the marketing initiatives or campaigns (from among many proposals) that the firm should actually implement (as well as those that the firm should not approve) and allocates those budgets to the markets, channels, and products that yield the greatest margin, while simultaneously evaluating the impact on the entire supply chain, from raw material procurement to final customer delivery (it is clearly pointless to generate demand that cannot be satisfied at a profit, or where there are more profitable alternatives). To do so IES explicitly includes procurement costs and capacities, manufacturing costs and capacities, all transportation, warehousing, duty, tax, port handling, and in-transit inventory costs, customer service requirements, and marketing costs and budget limits. It identifies markets, channels and products that are winners as well as those that are losers, together with the optimal set of facility locations (supplier, manufacturing, distribution center, port, and so on) to support them. IES also handles other critical supply chain planning issues such as capital planning, strategic outsourcing, vulnerability analysis and carbon footprint minimization.
The ultimate IES bottom line? A true corporate strategy that maximizes profit and, ultimately, return on shareholder equity.
About Insight, Inc.
INSIGHT provides optimization-based supply chain design software and consulting services developed specifically to meet the dynamic business challenges of globalization, disruptions, and mergers/acquisitions prevalent in today's business environment. Founded by supply chain and logistics experts in 1978 with the goal of using world-class technology to add intelligence to decision making, INSIGHT solves the supply chain management issues of the world's foremost companies, including Abbott Laboratories, BASF, Clorox, ExxonMobil, Goodyear, GE, Kellogg, Nestle, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, and Unilever.
SAILS, INSIGHT's award-winning flagship product, can accurately represent a company's current business practices, from raw materials sourcing to capacity planning through delivery to the end customer. The X-System, a proprietary optimization engine, powers a family of planning and scheduling solutions, from the design of a global supply chains to crew scheduling, troop deployments, and transportation procurement. In addition, INSIGHT provides optimization components, partnering with third party software providers to deliver best-of-breed solutions. Our software and services help design optimal supply chain networks that minimize costs and free up capital, streamline operations, maximize profits, and increase customer service levels. For more information, visit http://www.insight-mss.com.
SOURCE: INSIGHT, Inc.