The Commercial Business Planning  is a comprehensive process and system linking Finance Marketing, Sales & supply chain.

This is especially targeted companies who have sales of products to the retail channel.

The process includes aligning marketing plans, financial goals , sales forecasts, production forecasts and calculation of ROI and promotion evaluation.

Are you looking at following challenges in your business ?

External factors

• With Globalization of Customers and Vendors there is an increasing need to act and run the organization Globally
• Markets change more rapidly therefore a significant need to launch new products faster and revitalize existing product portfolio
• Customers drive longer lead times for their own planning activities
• High pressure on trading terms like price,margin and delivering terms as customers consolidate and increase their negotiating power
• Campaigns and Trade promotions spends are large investments and increasing need to measure impact and ROI
• If selling name Brands, increasing competition from generic ”no-name” products
• Customers have better information

Internal challeges

• Marketing, Sales, Supply chain and Finance tend to work in silos. Need aligment between functions to increase synergy and visibility to financial results and ROI
• Difficult to communicate and meausre that Company strategy is followed at operational level
• Financial estimate, salesforecast and production/purchasing plan are not aligned often many different reports and numbers
• Few employees own and maintain critical ”spreadsheet” application for core processes.
• Inventory control increasingly important and a need to have forecast accuracy as leadtimes increase, especially when sourcing globally
• Large number of SKU’s to manage
• Account managers spend significant time on plannning rather than developing the business with customers. Need to have as much information or better information than the customers
• Large amounts of data in organisation. Significant time spent preparing management reports. Need to streamline and simplify data extraction to focus on analysis and answer to business questions
• Need to have easier, faster and consistent access to ”up-to date” information on intranet or mobile devices for all levels in the organization

If this sounds familiar then you might benefit from a Commercial Planning process