Nowadays, companies are faced with increasingly complex scenarios characterised by high levels of digitalization and globalization. These factors have provided companies with a number of interesting opportunities such as the access to new and broader markets, but at the same time they have also created additional challenges for supply chain planning. Globalization has led to stronger competition and an increased level of uncertainty on both the demand and supply sides. Customer bases are heterogeneous and more and more demanding, while supply structures have become increasingly more complex, making their management more difficult than ever. Against this background, business success depends on the ability of a company to adapt its organizational model to an environment that is in constant flux.

A company that aims to support its growth process, while maintaining its competitive position, must be able not only to optimize communication and information sharing between its business functions, but must also ensure that its operational plans and long term strategic goals as defined by its executives are in line with each other.

Seen from this viewpoint, close cooperation between academic research and the real business world can offer interesting and helpful insights into how to manage company planning processes by implementing Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP).

This paper aims to help the reader to define and understand S&OP, which in the author’s view is a key component in company success. Our intention with this paper is to provide guidelines to the successful management of S&OP implementation and to flag up some of the potential pitfalls in implementation.