If you work in an SME, you have lived through this cycle: sales sells something operations cannot deliver by the promised deadline; or operations produces something sales cannot sell at the expected pace; or purchasing buys too much input when the mix has changed; or purchasing buys too little when demand has risen. All of these problems have a name: misalignment between sales and operations.
The remedy, in the corporate world, is called S&OP — Sales & Operations Planning. It is a structured monthly meeting in which sales, operations, purchasing, finance, and leadership look together at the next 12 to 18 months, calibrating expectations and making joint decisions on demand, capacity, and cash.
The problem: the classic version of S&OP was designed for large corporations and involves six stages, five preparatory meetings, three committees, heavy decks, and an entire month of organizing — which is unworkable for a company with 30 to 150 employees.
An SME does not need the corporate version of S&OP. It needs the logic of S&OP in a version that fits into 90 minutes per month.
What an SME needs to preserve from the original logic
Regardless of size, S&OP has four questions that need answering every month. Mid-sized companies tend to answer these questions in fragmented conversations scattered across the month, with no structure — and that is where misalignment is born.
- How is demand versus forecast? Sales brings the read on the last 30 days and an honest projection for the next 90 and 180 days.
- How is capacity versus what is needed? Operations brings where we have slack and where we are stretched, product by product or line by line.
- How is cash versus what is required? Finance brings a consolidated cash projection under the current demand scenario.
- What decisions do we need to make together this month? This is where the value is created: hiring, outsourcing, inventory increases, decisions on raw-material purchases, decisions on customer prioritization, whether or not to accept a large new client.
How to structure it in 90 minutes per month
We suggest splitting the lean S&OP into two monthly 45-minute sessions, one week apart. The first session establishes the facts; the second makes the decisions.
Session 1 — Facts (45 min)
- Minutes 0–10: Sales presents demand over the last 30 days vs. forecast + projection for the next 90 days, with the rationale in 3 bullets.
- Minutes 10–20: Operations presents capacity and utilization by line/service, highlighting the 2 or 3 active bottlenecks.
- Minutes 20–30: Finance presents the cash projection for the next 90 days under the current scenario.
- Minutes 30–40: Structured discussion — what do we need to decide at the next session?
- Minutes 40–45: Confirmed list of target decisions, with the additional data that needs to be prepared.
Session 2 — Decisions (45 min, one week later)
- Minutes 0–5: Recap of the facts and the target decisions defined in Session 1.
- Minutes 5–35: Deliberation and decision on each item — with owners, deadlines, and tracking indicators.
- Minutes 35–40: Alignment on communication (who communicates what to the rest of the organization).
- Minutes 40–45: Close — decisions formalized in short minutes (one page, distributed within 24 hours).
Three common traps in implementation
Trap 1 — The meeting turns into a presentation
If the two sessions become "each area presents its slides", the company has created a monthly meeting, not an S&OP. The central question is always "what decision do we need to make together" — and the structure has to force that.
Trap 2 — The owner is absent
In an SME, decisions about demand, capacity, and cash involve trade-offs that only the owner or the CEO has the authority to close. Delegating S&OP to the "operations manager" turns the meeting into theater. The owner needs to be in both sessions, every month.
Trap 3 — Lack of 6-month discipline
The real value of S&OP appears from the 4th or 5th cycle onward. In the first 2 months, it feels like just another meeting; from the 3rd, it starts anticipating problems the company had grown used to suffering only as they happened. Implementation requires 6 months of discipline to reveal its value.
When it makes sense to implement
Not every SME needs S&OP. Signs that the timing is right:
- Sales and operations are in recurring conflict over deadlines, priorities, or capacity.
- In the last 6 months, you had at least two cash surprises (positive or negative) that "no one saw coming".
- Your company has grown (or is growing) from 30 to 80+ employees — the size at which informal decision-making stops scaling.
- You operate in an industry with meaningful seasonal variation or demand volatility.
How SPCG supports implementation
Our Operations practice includes a lean S&OP implementation and facilitation service — a specific consulting format designed for SMEs. We facilitate the two monthly sessions through the first 6 cycles, help structure the supporting data, train the internal team to run the S&OP autonomously from the 7th month onward, and hold a quarterly calibration session during the first year after autonomy.
This service is offered on an ongoing basis — 90 minutes per month facilitated by SPCG, split into two 45-minute sessions — and it is not free. It is one of the few formats in which we work on a recurring monthly model, precisely because S&OP only delivers value with continuity.
If you recognize the signs above, it is worth having a free 45-minute exploratory conversation to assess whether your timing is right.