Sales and operations planning: empirical insights into perceived relevance and lack of implementation

The objective of the paper is to advance the understanding of the relationship between the reasons for not using Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), the perceived relevance of S&OP and the performance of the firm. This study is based on 156 valid answers to a questionnaire-survey distributed among Danish manufacturers. Furthermore, secondary performance data on return on investment and net income index are included in the analysis. The results indicate that the more the respondents perceive a lack of knowledge about S&OP the more they perceive the relevance of S&OP. The results also convey that the more the respondents perceive unrecognised needs the less they perceive the relevance of S&OP. Furthermore, the results show that lack of implementation skills does not influence the relevance of S&OP. The results also indicate that the perceived relevance of S&OP is interrelated with sales performance in terms of customer and delivery performance but not with operational or financial performance.