I once advised an MIT graduate student who was conducting research comparing the Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) processes across manufacturing industries. One day he came into my office, a little confused after interviewing a consulting firm that told him they consider strategic planning as part of their S&OP consulting services.
This perspective differed from my view that S&OP is a medium-term, tactical planning process, whereas strategic planning is a long-term planning process. Having been a consultant, I perhaps too glibly posited that this firm was including strategic planning in S&OP implementations to make the consulting projects bigger deals. In any case, whenever I discuss S&OP, I refer to this anecdote in pointing out the differences between the planning processes.
Recently, an ex-consultant countered that sometimes it is not them who add strategic planning requirements to a consulting engagement. Rather, clients sometimes add a strategic planning component to their request-for-proposal (RFP). So the consultant includes strategic planning in their proposal, often knowing it might jeopardize a successful S&OP implementation. They recognize that a heavy concentration on strategic planning will drain time and resources away from the S&OP implementation. So invariably, most consultants will downplay the strategic planning aspects of the engagement and concentrate on doing the myriad things needed to implement an S&OP process.
One other observation about the relationship between strategic planning and S&OP bears mentioning. I’m familiar with one S&OP process team that is asked to review strategic plans; thus, they feel that their job includes strategic planning. Their perspective can be risky, too, because it often draws too much attention on long-term factors that are immaterial to consider during a medium-term S&OP process.