Sonos makes supply chain harmony with Connected Planning
Consumer electronics company creates end-to-end visibility and frees planners’ time for analysis
Home audio manufacturer Sonos managed its complex supply and demand ecosystem, including more than 200 component suppliers, using countless spreadsheets. The process was slow and error-prone, and as Heather Williams, head of Integrated Business Planning recalls, “all the planners really spent a lot more time maintaining spreadsheets than they did actually planning.” With Anaplan, Sonos has a connected product plan across resources, spending, and product lines, and planners do more value-added work.
Our ability to collaborate internally is vastly improved, which reduces the stress level and really enables a better team relationship.Heather Williams, Senior Director of Integrated Business Planning
10%
of one FTE’s time spent integrating spreadsheets, down from 70%
One
day to execute demand changes, down from two weeks
Improved
visibility across resources, spending, and product lines
Sonos invented multi-room wireless home audio and markets its products in more than 50 countries. Before Anaplan, Sonos managed its complex supply and demand ecosystem using dozens of spreadsheets. With a supply base consisting of over 200 individual component suppliers, the Sonos supply chain planning team struggled to balance supply and global demand. The process was slow and error-prone, and planners spent the majority of their time manually maintaining and connecting data points.
Sonos brought in Anaplan and created end-to-end supply chain visibility with plans that span resources, spending, and product lines. The Sonos team started their implementation with supply and demand balancing, and then added a supply planning module that enables a granular view of products at the factory level. Most recently, they incorporated demand planning to add forecasting into the mix.
The biggest ROI that Sonos has found with Anaplan is measured in hours. For example, one analyst who previously spent 70 percent of her time integrating spreadsheets now spends less than 10 percent of her time on that task. The Global Planning team also saves time in their planning cycle. For example, executing a change in demand used to take two weeks—now it takes just one day.
Sonos chose Anaplan for its speed and flexibility. With Anaplan’s cloud-based platform, the team has a vision to connect more parts of the business, improve communication, and influence culture change. As Heather Williams, Senior Director of Integrated Business Planning, said: “Our ability to collaborate internally is vastly improved, which reduces the stress level and really enables a better team relationship.”
