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Nine decisions. One connected context.
Connected planning becomes most valuable when decisions cross functions, systems, partners, and time horizons.
The white paper shows where connected planning creates value across three types of decision moments: sensing change earlier, making constrained choices with more confidence, and coordinating action across partners and execution teams.
Sense demand and inventory changes earlier
Demand Sensing and replenishment: Reposition inventory when actual consumption diverges from the plan.
MEIO and network inventory: Set inventory targets across tiers and locations to balance service, working capital, and risk.
New product demand: Estimate demand before sales history exists and refine the plan as new signals arrive.
Make supply and allocation decisions more confidently
Supply Sensing and feasible supply: Identify material, capacity, and supplier constraints before commitments harden.
Supply Planning and constrained allocation: Allocate scarce components against business priorities without stranding supply.
Shortage response: Evaluate business impact and compare mitigation scenarios across service, revenue, inventory, and risk.
Coordinate partner execution and continuous improvement
Owned and supplier-owned inventory: Plan VMI, consigned, and enterprise-owned inventory as one network decision.
Contract manufacturing: Compare plans with external manufacturing capacity, materials, inventory, and execution reality.
Continuous improvement: Test changes to signals, policies, and assumptions before deploying them at scale.
Build the foundation for faster, more executable decisions
Connected planning is an operating model, not simply a broader planning suite or a better forecast. It connects the context around the decision, enabling supply chain orchestration across functions and trading partners so planners can move from signal to coordinated response.
From planner to decision orchestrator
As the operating model matures, planners spend less time reconciling spreadsheets and chasing updates, and more time interpreting signals, evaluating trade-offs, managing exceptions, and aligning the people who need to act.
The white paper also outlines measures that help leaders see whether connected planning is creating value: decision latency, exception resolution, trade-off quality, planning-to-execution adherence, and partner responsiveness.
FAQs
What is connected supply chain planning?
Connected planning is an outside-in operating model that connects demand, supply, inventory, partner, and execution signals so organizations can reduce assumptions, evaluate trade-offs, align stakeholders, and carry decisions into action.
What is outside-in supply chain planning?
Outside-in planning brings real-world signals such as customer orders, point-of-sale activity, channel inventory, supplier capacity, material constraints, shipments, logistics status, and execution risk directly into planning decisions.
How is connected planning different from a broader planning suite?
A common planning foundation is important, but connected planning goes further by linking planning decisions to the signals, constraints, commitments, partner inputs, and execution realities that determine whether a plan is feasible.
How does connected planning support autonomous planning?
Connected planning provides the trusted context, shared workflows, decision rights, guardrails, and execution handoffs that systems need to monitor signals, generate scenarios, recommend actions, and coordinate routine planning support.
Where should an organization start?
Start with one high-value decision that crosses functional or company boundaries, map the signal, stakeholders, data, trade-offs, handoffs, and success measure, then expand the pattern to additional decisions.
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