[00:00:00.120] Emilio. Hey, thanks for joining me today.

[00:00:02.360] Pleasure to be here.

[00:00:03.680] Uh, Amelia, you lead leads planning practice and are our resident planning expert. So tell me, in your evaluation of clients, what are some key indicators of planning processes that are more successful than others?

[00:00:21.360] So I think, um, you know, every supply chain is trying to balance, uh, capital, uh, cost and service level. Um, and in different ways. And so I think the, you know, the best planning organizations that, um, that I see have the ability to, to, to, to kind of build a longer term plan but still remain agile, uh, and still be to some extent kind of reactive, but in a, in a positive way to, to customer demand. So not just having, for example, you know, a budget which is very static, but also have a plan which or a tool or set of tools that can help them remain agile.

[00:01:01.440] Okay, I see why you’re our expert. So I’m gonna steal 15 minutes of your free consulting time today to really talk about peak season planning. Um, you know, we’re in the thick of it right now for retailers. Singles day is a few days away. Black Friday and Cyber Week are just around the corner. As a retailer, I’m thinking about two major things right now inventory and demand changes. I’ve already made all my decisions. Can I really do anything at this point? Right. Um. We know that planning cycle starts way in advance, months in advance. But, you know, with a robust kind of planning cycle that you think about agility, what are some of the ways advanced technologies can really help me in the moment? So we’ll talk about a look back later. But right now how can advanced technologies help.

[00:01:54.330] Yeah. So so if you think of, you know, and you’re asking the question, I believe from a, from a point, a standpoint of, you know, well, things aren’t going exactly as, as expected, which is always the case, right? No matter what you what number you put down on, on paper for what you’re going to sell and how much inventory you plan never goes exactly according according to plan. So I think the context is coming from, hey, something’s a little bit different than expected, right?

[00:02:17.950] Absolutely nothing ever goes right.

[00:02:19.670] Exactly. And so, you know, when you talk about, um, you know, how do you respond to that? What are the right kind of tools that you need to respond to that? There’s a you know, the first part I look at is, well, first of all, do you even are you able to know quickly that you have an issue, you know, has that demand come in strong like stronger than expected or, or and will you potentially be in a stockout position? Uh, and if so, you know, can you how quickly can you see that? How quickly can you react to it. So the first part is being notified, having the visibility of it. And then the second is once you’ve realized, oh yeah, we actually do have a problem, what can we do about it? Um, and what can we do about it is it’s not just a question of, well, coming up with, you know, the brainstorming of here’s the three solutions to that problem.

[00:03:04.510] Um, but actually quantifying those three scenarios looking at, hey, well if we do, if we do a, B, so, you know, we have three options that are disposable. We can we can do A, B or C to try to get ourselves out of this hole. Either, you know, it’s a it’s an expedited Po. It’s maybe it’s some overtime on a manufacturing run. It’s, uh, you know, getting maybe finding another supplier, what have you. Um, but looking at, you know, once you found those three, those three options, it’s then a matter of evaluating, quantifying how how will each of those scenarios affect their overall performance? How will it allow us to capture more revenue? What will it do for our costs? What will it do for our service level? And then kind of eyes wide open, selecting the best of those of those scenarios to move forward with as as a business. And now I believe many organizations do a form of this.

[00:03:55.160] But, you know, back to the question you asked before, what’s a what’s the sign of a really good, uh, planning organization is the ability to do that very quickly. So to not have to spend, you know, a day analyzing each of those scenarios for next week’s meeting, where you’re then going to decide what to do. But being able to do that within a matter of of of minutes, hours, uh, come to a decision with, with, with the gang and then and then execute against that plan.

[00:04:20.370] So what you’re saying is my Excel model that I’ve honed over many years of practice just might not cut it today.

[00:04:28.210] That’s right. It’s not. And those, you know, it’s a thing of running through um, through those models is it’s a, it’s a kind of a brute force method. Can you get an answer? Certainly. But you’re going to have to spend a lot of time to do it. I heard actually someone I was speaking with today say, you know, they do their job during during the day and then they go home for the night shift of trying to solve the, you know, all of those, all of those issues to come back with an answer the following day, which is not a position that is sustainable or that you want to put anyone, anyone else in, yet you you still need to do all of that analysis. So so it’s a matter of being able to do it in an efficient manner. Um, and not always relying on that, that, that I’m sure excellent spreadsheet that you, that you that you built up?

[00:05:11.670] Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a really interesting point to think about scenario planning and, um, being able to run through several decision points. Um, what it sounds like to me at pretty fast speeds, right? Because you’re, you’re allowing systems to calculate for you and likely inputting variables to say, what happens if I stock out early? What’s my revenue miss? Do I substitutions, do I have other options? Um, and I know from being a planner for many years that. Yeah, that that analysis, you got to wait until the end of the day to close out your sales, kind of recalculate and then call a meeting and then hope to make a decision in a few days. And what we’re seeing is that companies are making those decisions within the same day, if not reacting quite quickly.

[00:06:04.270] Right. And, um, you know, there’s kind of two, two ways you can do these kind of preemptive scenarios or the kind of more the, the, the reactive, you know, something has changed. The condition has changed. What? You know, how do we best solve this problem? That’s kind of the one that I guess I was, you know, talking about there. But there’s also the benefit of running these scenarios that you can do it in advance. Hey. What let’s, let’s, you know, let’s challenge some of the assumptions that we’ve made. What happens if, you know, demand for this whole category doesn’t come in as strong as we expected or stronger than we expected and do that, you know, a few months in advance. Imagine you were running those scenarios two months ago to already have defined a playbook, a plan of action for if demand comes in hotter than expected, we’re going to activate that that that playbook and we’re going to go and execute these steps.

[00:06:50.640] So you’ve you’ve given yourself the ability to, um, to, to, to uh, to, to assess that in a kind of a calm, you know, assess those different options in a, in a calmer, uh, you know, non the heat of the moment, um, uh, situation where you can actually make the most rational decision for the, for the business.

[00:07:08.160] Wow. So what you’re what you’re kind of pushing towards and what you’re identifying is our ability to Again, really plan forward into multi-scenario situations and have a more diversified kind of playbook ready to go. So today, again, I have a surge in demand in, you know, we were talking earlier, we’re going to start taking a lot of B12. Holidays are coming. Got to boost the liver a little bit. Uh, and I run a supplements business. And that surge is happening today. Um, you know, what do I do next? Right? Do I stock out? Do I try to expedite? Do I pivot to other, like, products? Um, what we’re talking about is making those decisions. Six months ago, along with my tried and true base decision of this is how much I’m going to buy. This is what I’m going to show up. And so when I do get to this point and there’s a huge surge, I already have, you know, my my B’s and C’s and D’s and on all of those other plans ready to go.

[00:08:14.210] Yeah. You’re you’re ready to roll with, with a backup plan that you’ve, that you’ve tested out essentially.

[00:08:19.310] That sounds way too easy.

[00:08:21.630] It is. Yeah. And actually, you know, it it’s it sounds, um, easy, but it’s not. Uh, well, it’s certainly it takes a lot of work to get there, but. And it’s also not an idealistic, um, uh, kind of solution that, you know, this exists. Companies are doing this. It’s not just a kind of a far fetched idea. This is the reality that we that we live in now, um, you know, the kind of the base step that’s required is having your, your entire supply chain data connected on one kind of platform, not having the six spreadsheets that you have to work through. That’s not conducive to to being quick and nimble. If you have to kind of go from, from, you know, passing it from one stakeholder to the next, and everyone has to crunch their numbers. So getting all that data onto, onto one, one platform and then and then having kind of a, you know, the ability to crunch that, that data, uh, quickly as well.

[00:09:14.910] Like if you think about it, the cost of, you know, I’ll put it put it this way. Actually, many folks are talking about, oh, how do I use AI? You know, in the supply chain. It’s a very valuable question. And and, you know, how do you do that if your data is not connected, if you’re not kind of all on, on one platform. So I think step one is you get get yourself onto, onto the right platform, and then you can start thinking about the things that I don’t want to call them farfetched because they are those are actually becoming more, more prevalent. But, you know, having the self-healing kind of AI supply chain is not that far off you. We’re pretty much in it. And so, you know, you just have to take some some steps to in that right direction, which is getting out of spreadsheets, getting on one kind of one, one shared platform.

[00:10:00.720] Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I think the connectivity piece, uh, that technology brings today, you know, is so powerful. And there’s still areas of business specifically around planning where we are heavily reliant on, um, static Information like static style analytics. Exactly. And what you’re saying is kind of that next level. Isn’t that out of reach? It’s all pretty implementable.

[00:10:33.050] It is certainly. Yeah. And it’s and it’s you know, if you look back in just a few years ago, it’s the you know, what I’m talking about with like a self-healing supply chain, the ability to re recalculate essentially a plan and change that at a moment’s notice, like when a, when a condition changes is becoming more and more achievable as the cost of computing is continuing to, to decrease, you know, so you can generate all this all this data have this in one place. But not only that, with the right tool, you’re then able to actually recalculate that. And it doesn’t cost you, uh, you know, an arm or a leg. It’s not impossible. It’s really, really achievable and becoming increasingly affordable as well.

[00:11:11.970] Awesome. Um, you know, this agility of decision making, you know, once the dust settles in peak season, because we’re in it. And and for those companies out there who have not employed these advanced technologies or the ability to move quickly, the dust is going to settle sometime in January. What would be your advice to these companies who are now looking back and saying, this is what happened, this is how we fix it? You know, what are three steps forward for somebody like that?

[00:11:44.710] Yeah, I mean, I think I think at this point it’s or, you know, do it early in January when things have calmed down. Like get get started. These are not, you know, any of these kind of a planning transformation. Any transformation for that matter is not, um, is not easy. Uh, it takes a lot of effort. And you ideally should be doing these, like, you know, setting yourself up to do these in kind of a phased approach, a phased rollout, so that, you know, by by next, you know, end of summer, you’re, you’re already in a good place where you’ve, you’ve made significant improvements to, to the way that you’re to the way that you’re planning.

[00:12:17.950] Awesome.

[00:12:18.830] Well, thank you for that advice. And have a great day.

[00:12:23.070] Yeah. Pleasure.

[00:12:23.790] Thank you. Thanks.