Extra-M automated S&OP based on the Russian Optimacros platform

2023: Completion of S&OP Process Automation Project

On January 26, 2023, the company Optimacros"" announced the completion of a project in Extra M"" to automate the process S&OP (planning sales and operations) on the basis. the Russian Optimacros platforms The result of the project, which lasted three months, was an optimization of sales planning, as well as a reduction in labor costs for managing the company's production.

According to Optimacros, as the volume of Extra M production increased, planning processes became more complicated and required constantly increasing labor costs. At the time of the automation decision, planning was carried out in Excel and was built as follows: on a weekly basis, 10 managers made a sales forecast in their personal files, then, after validation of their calculations by the responsible manager, all the data were compiled into a general sales forecast file, which was sent to the inventory management department. There, based on forecast values ​ ​ and data manually unloaded from several reports in 1C, the need for ordering imported products and the need for in-house products were calculated. The volumes of imports obtained in this way were sent for further processing, where specialists distributed the demand for applications and manually entered them in 1C. All this took a significant amount of time.

The disadvantages of the existing approach were the lack of data integrity, the waste of a lot of time for manual processing of indicators, a high probability of human error. In order to optimize the process, the task was set to reduce labor costs and the duration of the planning cycle within the Sales-Production-Procurement-Logistics-Personnel chain due to the methodological improvement of the planning process and its automation in a single system. To implement the task, the domestic Optimacros platform was chosen. commented Olga Sokolova, CFO of Extra M

The project was formed iteratively and was divided into functional blocks, after the development of each of which was completed, users received a ready-made planning tool for a separate business process and proceeded to test and then use it. The planning processes were further set up and integrated with feedback from users. The full implementation was completed in 3 months, within the initially agreed period.

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= added Olga Sokolova' Each specialist has his own personal desktop, where in addition to it can find such useful information as historical sales data, the current size of its own bonus, etc. The sales forecasting unit introduced systems for coordinating plans and calculating KPIs, which are linked to the calculation of bonuses for managers. The production control unit was also debugged: when drawing up production schedules, the manager knows exactly how long and how much product is ready for the transition to packaging, sees up-to-date data on the availability of production lines and raw material volumes. Due to the flexibility of Optimacros, during the project it was possible to maintain the familiar user experience: uploading production schedules from Optimacros to Excel was configured in such a way that the uploaded file completely retained its original familiar view for production workers.}}

During the project, a full cycle of data exchange between Optimacros and 1C was configured, as a result of which the work of managers for interaction with this accounting system was optimized. Now users do not need to independently generate and upload reports from 1C - the Optimacros platform automatically downloads, processes and offers up-to-date data for use every day. The inventory department no longer has to manually enter orders to suppliers, they are automatically generated in Optimacros and unloaded in 1C with one click.

As a result of the project implementation, the process of planning sales and operations in Extra M has become more transparent at all levels: the manager has access to a view of the planning results, the prerequisites that formed its basis, and the plan-fact analysis report. We are pleased with the achieved result, which resulted in the creation of the S&OP process automation tool, where sales plans are received, and a consistent production and procurement plan appears at the output. noted Maxim Shilov, Development and Sales Director of Optimacros

The transfer of the S&OP process of the company to the Optimacros platform is completely completed, but Extra M continues to develop the internal ecosystem of the platform, automating the processes of financial planning and budgeting, formation of management reporting by its own employees who received Optimacros training during the project.