How Does Outperform Planning Work?

Outperform is a multiuser system, with each user responsible for a different area of the sales and operations planning cycle. To make effective/accurate plans at every level of the business. it is important for the overall sales and operations planning cycle to be performed from start to finish.  Outperform Planning has been built around this process and uses a combination of reports, system functions, and user input in order to create the perfect plan.

The S&OP process starts at the sales plan, i.e. how much the business estimates they will sell to each customer. Outperform transforms this information into demand on the business's warehouses. Then, OP moves to supply planning, i.e., how the plan will satisfy the demand and keep inventory levels correct. And OP plans the scheduling, i.e., the detailed plans for execution.

Since different users are each planning their area of responsibility, there are certain “handovers” built into the application to ensure stability for the subsequent planning steps. This means that the sales planner can plan and play around with the sales plan until they are satisfied and then publish the final plan to the rest of the business. This gives your sales planner the freedom to do their planning without causing any undesired fluctuations in the supply planning. Internal company operations determines when/how frequently the sales plan is published. 

After initial setup of the Outperform application, the basic planning process within the application is as follows:

1. Run integration (usually done as a background scheduled task)
2. Create sales plan
3. Publish sales plan
4. Plan supply
5. Consolidate plan
6. Schedule production
7. Export – for execution