Evolving from S&OP to IBP to drive an 18-month forecasting process and improve collaboration across sales, marketing, finance, and logistics.
Spanish beer company Mahou San Miguel, one of the key international players in FMCG, embarked on a transformative journey to evolve its Sales & Operations Execution process into a structured S&OP cycle and then into a fully Integrated Business Planning (IBP) approach.
Mahou San Miguel aims to maintain its position as a key player and reference in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector at an international level, whilst leading the natural and authentic beverage categories in which it competes in the Spanish market. To do this, the company’s management team began a digital transformation effort that focused on the use of innovative technology to leverage information as a competitive advantage, alongside their traditional value of placing consumers and employees at the centre of their decisions.
Managers began by looking at the Sales & Operations process, searching for technology that would help the business evolve from Sales & Operations Execution (S&OE) to Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP), extending the timeframe of the plans. They wanted to move from an executional way of working to a strategic and proactive approach.
The new solution had to provide a collaborative environment where the conversations pivoted around the value, i.e., the impact of the volumes on the business, rather than just the mere quantities. Additionally, given the complexity of Mahou San Miguel’s product portfolio, the management team needed a platform capable of easily segmenting and analysing their portfolio to support a more reactive and responsive way of planning.
To support the change, the business chose the Board Enterprise Planning platform, using it to introduce a collaborative forecasting process that covers an 18-month time horizon. The process combines the single forecasts from all the key areas of the organisation in one complete version, which is seamlessly integrated with the simulation capabilities of Board to generate and compare different business scenarios.
The S&OP process supports a consensus meeting every month, where the sales team validates a three-month forecast and evaluates the activities based on corporate KPIs, all within one platform. Collaboration has been significantly increased as a result and the team has been empowered by the complete visibility they have of performance
“The most important thing we recognised was that Board allows us to jump from volume to value conversations: through the decision-making platform we are able to translate our information into value, for both the company and our customers.” says Marina Anton, S&OP Lead at Mahou San Miguel.
Mahou San Miguel is going to further expand the use of Board to make the most of the Integrated Business Planning approach. The company wants to drive its financial budgeting and planning process by combining it with the strategic plan and the production capacity plan too, all within the Board platform.
Stuart Provan, RVP / Country Manager UK at Board.
Stuart Provan is an experienced leader in the software industry and is currently the UK Country Head at Board, the Enterprise Planning software company. He successfully grew consulting and sales teams at Oracle and Anaplan prior to joining Board in August 2024. His experience ranges from implementation, customer service and sales: he has spent much of his career working with the world’s largest CPG, Retail, Manufacturing, Natural Resources and Telecom companies.
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