Many global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) organizations operate utilizing a regional approach to Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) processes. A region-focused approach to S&OP aligns demand and supply and involves consistent processes and executive decision-making to optimize across the local market.  

However, this local focus creates gaps and opportunities across the global organization as supply and demand imbalances exist from market to market. What may be excess inventory in one region is a supply shortage in another. Decisions made in one market may lead to cost and margin differences across a similar product portfolio in a different region. Leadership teams may need to intervene to solve challenges across regions that could have been addressed earlier in the planning cycle if a global approach were leveraged. 

A global approach to S&OP enables organizations to align demand and supply, balance inventory, and optimize financial and operational performance across the entire global market and product portfolio. Tradeoffs can be made in one market to improve the overall performance of the organization. It equips organizations to make tactical decisions, such as using temporary co-manufacturing vs underutilizing lines, or reoptimizing your production wheel to minimize changeovers over prioritizing lot sizes.  

When Does a Global S&OP Process Add Value? 

Global S&OP processes add the most value to organizations that feature commonalities across their regional supply chain and product portfolio networks. Global manufacturing networks sharing capacity across regions are a great example, as decisions made in support of one region may impact another. Capital-intensive manufacturing assets require strategic decisions to make the right investment that supports the global business. Other considerations include shared sourcing of raw materials, global brand portfolios, and high SKU proliferation. 

In each of these examples, what may be a small impact on one region may be detrimental to another. A global S&OP model can address these considerations and make optimal decisions utilizing an enterprise-wide viewpoint, while preserving regional ownership. 

Does that mean every global organization should leverage a global S&OP process? Not necessarily.   

Organizations with truly different supply chains across regions, separate product portfolios, and organizations with significant regulatory differences across regions will not achieve the same benefits as decisions will independently impact each region. In these scenarios, regional processes can achieve desired results as operational and financial optimization occurs at the regional level.  

Best Practices in Establishing a Global S&OP Process 

Aligning to and developing a successful global S&OP process requires establishing best practices touching across process, people, and technology. However, a critical first step to success is developing a governance plan to align the organization and ensure there is clarity as the S&OP process is developed and executed.  

Governance

A RACI model provides the foundation for the S&OP process by clarifying expectations for tasks, responsibilities, decision rights, and what should be managed regionally vs. globally. An escalation framework with defined thresholds helps guide financial and operational decisions, while clear accountability at both the regional and global levels supports effective decision-making and ownership of override decisions. 

Process 

It’s important to establish core fundamental S&OP meetings with a standardized and consistent cadence across the organization for both regional and global meetings. 

At the regional level, the planning process should include product, portfolio, and demand reviews. During these activities, demand is aggregated to the central supply to measure against production capacity, and a regional supply review is performed to review how allocated supply supports demand. Reconciliation is conducted to align demand and supply at the regional level and then plans are consolidated to be published for the global executive S&OP review. 

In developing these meetings, the organization should align key meeting attendees, required inputs to the meetings, and expected outputs from each step in the S&OP process, with each meeting building toward the executive global S&OP meeting and the finalization of an aligned, executable enterprise plan. Additionally, the organization should align the core focus and time spent within the S&OP process to actionable time horizons.  

Time spent as part of the S&OP process on the execution window (typically 1-3 months) should be extremely limited in nature and only focus on addressing risks and urgent changes needed to meet operational plans. Changes to forecasts in this near-term horizon typically don’t give supply chains sufficient time to react or provide sales teams enough time to adjust plans in a way that impacts performance (e.g., adding/removing a promotion), as most customer plans are locked.  

The core focus of the S&OP meeting should be on the 3–6-month window. For most organizations, this provides sufficient lead time for the supply chain to react and respond to demand changes while still allowing sales to influence performance before customer plans are finalized.  

The extended horizon – typically 6-24 months – should also be evaluated to support scenario modeling and longer-term strategic planning, such as adding manufacturing capacity or implementing growth strategies to increase volume. 

People 

To build on the strengths of a regional S&OP model, regional S&OP leaders should continue to play a central role in the process. They’re responsible for managing product, portfolio, and demand reviews, as well as reconciling regional supply plans. The output of these efforts will be a regional operating plan that aligns with their regional executives and clearly identifies risks, opportunities, and areas of escalation for the global executive S&OP meeting. 

In addition to the regional leads, a global S&OP process should include a global S&OP lead. The purpose of this role is to consolidate all the regional plans, evaluate trade-offs across the regions, reconcile financial impacts, and present the consolidated operating plan during the global executive S&OP review. After the global executive review, the global S&OP lead will disseminate information back to the regional leads regarding strategic decisions, goals, initiatives, and other impacts that the regional leads, who will then translate those decisions into action with their teams. 

Establishing this accountability across regional and global roles helps leaders take ownership of all facets of the plan. The global lead can provide enterprise-level visibility and coordination, while the regional leads remain accountable for execution. This structure enables the organization to manage the plan holistically while maintain the regional ownership – and accountability – needed to drive follow-through.   

Technology 

Technology plays a critical role in enabling a successful S&OP process. However, without a foundation that aligns organizational inputs and processes (e.g., demand plan and supply plan), an organization will struggle to drive an effective S&OP process – even with the right technology.  

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Advanced Planning Systems (APS) make it possible to harmonize end-to-end planning by integrating demand and supply signals continuously. By working with the same information and assumptions, all planners across the global organization can make tradeoffs together instead of locally or in isolation.   

Likewise, teams can evaluate enterprise-level tradeoffs across revenue, service, inventory, and capacity to drive collaborative decision-making. Real-time planning visibility, scenario modeling, and connected technology providing one source of truth enable organizations to optimize operating and financial plans across a global environment.  

APS also supports longer-term planning by enabling the global organization to develop plans from Rough-cut capacity planning (RCCP) through long-term guidance. Global guidance at the rough-cut level leaves room for the regions to break down to finite details required for local execution. The long-term plan allows the organization to secure required raw material and capacity commitments further in advance, strengthening and solidifying the foundation for future performance before execution even begins.  

Managing the Organizational Shift 

Shifting to a global S&OP process requires intentional and substantial change management to implement successfully and sustain over time. Executive support and sponsorship are critical, both during the transition to a global S&OP process and once the process is established. Strong leadership sponsorship helps balance and resolve common pressures that often emerge during these transformations, including regional resistance, concerns about the loss of autonomy, cultural differences across markets, and the need to realign organizational incentives to ensure intended outcomes.  

The Enterprise Impact 

When governance, people, process, and technology are aligned, a global S&OP process can transform how an organization operates and help deliver optimized operational and financial plans. It enables improved inventory positioning across regions, greater margin predictability, reduced working capital volatility, and faster resolution of critical trade-offs. Executive meetings can then shift from reactive problem-solving to structured decision-making, with incremental small wins building momentum and reinforcing the value of the process over time.  

Achieving shared, positive outcomes across Finance, Sales, Planning, Supply Chain, and Operations requires a deliberately designed process supported by organizational maturity and sustained leadership commitment. A well-structured global S&OP process gives the organization greater visibility into enterprise priorities and creates the accountability needed to improve decision-making and business performance. 

Clarkston partners with CPG organizations to assess readiness, design governance frameworks, align S&OP to financial planning, and enable technology platforms that support enterprise decision-making. By combining industry-specific expertise with practical implementation experience, we help leadership teams move from regional coordination to enterprise control in a way that is disciplined, scalable, and aligned to long-term value creation.