ran a national TV campaign for its best-selling apparel line. The demand planner updated the forecast on a Tuesday morning. But the supply team only found out eleven days later, in the monthly meeting! By then, the factory lead time had expired , and two outlet stores had empty shelves for the first week of the campaign. VP of Marketing: Tens of thousands of dollars in lost campaign revenue due to insufficient inventory! The marketing budget was spent. The traffic showed up. The product did not. This is what S&OP was supposed to fix, and in most retailers, it still has not. This is not a technology problem. It is the way most retailers organise the conversation between Sales and Operations. Integrated Business Planning , also known as Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), is the process that translates sales forecasts (“We expect to sell 50 units next month”) to products on the shelf (“75 units delivered at Store 125 last week”) .…