Are using Excel for your forecasting and sales and operations planning? Here is a quick list of the top 9 symptoms that your spreadsheets-based demand planning may be too much for Excel and time to move into a centralized planning system.

1. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Copyright © 2015 John Galt Solutions, Inc. Do not duplicate. Privileged and Confidential.
The Forecast Xperts®
Top 9 Symptoms
Your S&OP Process has
Outgrown Spreadsheets

2. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
92% of all companies still
use spreadsheets as a
primary tool in their S&OP
process.1
1 Source: Supply Chain Insights, LLC, Sales & Operations Study (Jan-May, 2015)

3. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Having seen hundreds of customers
go from spreadsheets to a
centralized planning system, here
are the top 9 reasons John Galt
Solutions has uncovered that make
spreadsheets hard to deal with.

4. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Too Many Planners
You have multiple demand planners working
from the same spreadsheet causing version
control and sharing issues.
1

5. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Too Many Stakeholders
You have a lot of people that need input into
or need to see the results of your planning
process, making it difficult to manage with
spreadsheets.
2

6. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Geographically Dispersed Team
Your planning team is in multiple locations,
making it difficult to manage input remotely
and asynchronously.
3

7. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Too Much, Too Complex Data
You have too much data for Excel. Your pivot
tables freeze, or you have to erase old data to
make room for new (losing history). You have
trouble inserting and lining up data from
different sources and modeling it all together.
4

8. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Cannot Incorporate Real-Time
Data
By the time you get your POS data into the
right spreadsheet, in the right format, it is
obsolete.
5

9. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Spend 80% of Time
Administering Data vs.
Analyzing it
More than half of your planner’s time is spent
gathering and manipulating data, rather than
uncovering key insights.
6

10. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Cannot Measure Value Add
You cannot save your forecast at every point
in the process and analyze it over time to
understand where value is or is not added.
7

11. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Difficulty Tracking
Assumptions
You have no reliable and efficient method for
tracking changes to the forecast and the
assumptions behind those changes from
different parties.
8

12. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Hard to Integrate Demand &
Supply
It is difficult to link your forecast to
procurement, production and inventory. You
are not optimizing your operations as well as
you should.
9

13. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
These are just some of the
symptoms you may be
experiencing if you are trying to run
your demand planning or S&OP
process with spreadsheets alone.
You are not alone in this situation,
or the move to a centralized
system. We have successfully
helped hundreds of companies
make the transition.
You are not Alone

14. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
What can you do?
Automate Track Integrate
With the right system, you can alleviate all these
symptoms and even achieve excellent ROI from
increased sales and operational improvements.

15. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Watch the Webinar
This webinar walks you through these
symptoms, as well as how a central
planning system addresses these issues
and more.

16. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Learn More About Atlas
The Atlas Planning Suite is a
comprehensive S&OP solution built in a
modular fashion and designed to
grow as your process matures.

17. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
Request a Demo
Contact John Galt to schedule a
demonstration of the Atlas Planning Suite
and what it can do for your particular
business.

18. | John Galt Solutions, Inc.Copyright © 2015 John GaltSolutions, Inc. – All rights reservedThe Forecast Xperts®
JOHN GALT SOLUTIONS, INC.
The Forecast Xperts®
www.johngalt.com