8 Sales and Operations Planning Best Practices for Smarter Decisions

We might be focused on procurement, but sometimes it's necessary to take a look around and see how well the foundations of your business are doing.

A key part of that?

Goes into sales and operations planning, or S&OP for short.

Sales and operations planning are all the things that keep companies of all sizes running as expected, no matter what life and the market throw your way.

When it’s working well, S&OP helps teams get aligned on what’s coming, what’s possible, and what trade-offs are worth making.

Done poorly?

Well, let's just say nothing good comes out of it.

Fortunately for you, we've compiled a list of the best practices that will help you to make your S&OP a complete success.

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Top Best Practices for Sales and Operations Planning.

1. Align on Clear Business Objectives

Have you ever tried to set new life habits without knowing why?

Yeah…that's how good intentions die.

One of the fastest ways for S&OP to derail is when no one’s clear on why you’re doing it in the first place. 

If your sales team is pushing for growth, operations is focused on cost-cutting, and finance just wants forecast accuracy, you’ll end up with competing goals and a lot of long meetings that nobody wants to attend.

That’s why the first best practice is to align your S&OP process with clear, shared business objectives. Are you prioritizing margin over volume? 

Are you targeting a specific service level?

Do you want to reduce inventory or buffer more stock for a product launch? These priorities need to be 100% clear, ideally before the first demand plan hits the table.

Leadership buy-in is key here. When all your managers are aligned on business strategy, it creates a solid foundation for the entire S&OP cycle. It also helps resolve conflicts faster: if two departments disagree, you can just go back to the agreed-upon goals. 

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2. Establish a Structured S&OP Process

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A good S&OP cycle usually follows five core phases:

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1. Data gathering (baseline sales, supply, inventory)

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2. Demand planning (what we think will happen)

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3. Supply planning (what we can do about it)

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4. Pre-S&OP or consensus meeting (trade-offs and alignment)

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5. Executive review (decisions and final sign-off)

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Regardless of the industry you work in, following this structure or a similar one lays out all the necessary steps so you can have the right conversations at the right time, no surprises, no skipped steps. 

It also makes it easier to improve over time, because you have a framework to look back on and adapt if it's needed.

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Standardize where it helps: shared templates, clear meeting agendas, decision logs. 

But don’t overdo it, leave room for discussion and iteration. 

Things change, the world can go crazy overnight so you don't want to feel pressured by following a rigid process.Build one that’s reliable and flexible enough to handle real-world complexity.

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3. Foster Real Collaboration Between Departments

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S&OP falls apart fast when each department shows up guarding their own interests. 

And we get it, marketing and finances won't have the same goals on a daily basis.

But…

Even if you have +10 departments, every single one is working for the same thing: Keep your company growing.

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Real collaboration is absolutely a must have. Bring your people close to have actual joint ownership of the plan. That means involving all the relevant figures early (sales, operations, marketing, finance, supply chain), building trust over time, and creating space for constructive feedback Everyone doesn’t have to agree, but they should feel heard and understand how their input affects the final plan.

4. Use Scenario Planning for Risk Management

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You don't need us to tell you that our world is messy and there's little chance that's going to change anytime soon.

Forecasting is useful, yes.

But…

Forecasts are never 100% right, at least not if working alone. That's why you also need to work based on different scenarios, aka, scenario planning.

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Start with a base case, your most likely scenario then layer in a high-demand and low-demand version. 

What happens if sales spike 20%?

What if a supplier delays a shipment by 3 weeks?

What if climate change hits your operations unexpectedly?

Yeah, those things can impact you hard. 

Scenario planning is how you test the waters of potential problems before they actually happen.

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5. Leverage the Right Technology

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Tech won’t fix broken processes, but the right tools will make collaboration smoother, data cleaner, and decisions faster.

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Start with visibility, can everyone access the same real-time data? 

Centralizing demand forecasts, inventory levels, and supply plans in a shared platform removes a lot of pain from your processes.

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Next is automation. 

Tools that auto-generate forecasts, flag anomalies, or simulate supply scenarios save hours of manual work and surface insights you might’ve missed. 

If your team is still spending most of the meeting time building the report instead of analyzing it, you’re leaving value on the table.

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6. Focus on Continuous Improvement

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Just because something worked well the first time, doesn’t mean you should leave and forget about it.

For each point of the process, ask yourself the following questions:

• What went well? 
• Where did the plan miss the mark?
• Did actuals line up with forecasts? 
• Was there confusion or misalignment between teams? 

Also, track the right metrics over time, forecast accuracy, plan vs. actual, inventory turns, and service levels. Don’t just report them; analyze the reason 

Missed forecast? Was it a data issue, a market shift, or internal miscommunication?

Importantly, don’t be afraid to tweak the process itself. If a certain meeting isn’t adding value, rework it. If the cadence is too slow for your market, tighten it up. S&OP should evolve as your business does.

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7. Keep the Executive Review Tight and Actionable

This isn’t the moment to walk through every forecast tweak. It’s decision time, and the meeting needs to be structured that way.

The best executive reviews are short, sharp, and focused on actions relevant to the success of your business. 

Dashboards and quick summary decks go a long way here. Highlight the key gaps, risks, and trade-offs. Something needs to be discussed? Do it in the most organized way possible. 

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8. Integrate Financial Planning

If your S&OP and financial planning feel like two separate worlds, you’re not imagining it. In a lot of companies, sales and ops are busy lining up supply and demand while finance is off building budgets and revenue forecasts that don’t quite match.

Here’s the fix: bring finance into your S&OP process from day one. When your financial goals and operational plans are built together, you get something that’s both realistic and profitable. If a supply issue forces you to shift your product mix, finance can update revenue projections instantly