Consensus is Futile: Demand Planners Must Take Control of the Planning Process

For many of us in the demand planning profession, the pursuit of consensus has become futile. It is a political morass, often unmoored from reality and centered on presenting a number that everyone wants to believe in, even if it makes no sense at all. In this article I reveal the problems with aiming for consensus and how most adjustments to the unconstrained forecast are negative value-add. I provide practical advice to take control of S&OP meetings, including bringing a data-driven forecast, being forearmed with product and business knowledge, holding commercial teams’ assumptions to account, and focusing only on high-value ...