Many of the sofco system wide functionalities are prefixed with the word “Multi”. The key ones are:

• Device
• Browser
• Language
• UOM
• Currency
• Dimension
• Hierarchy
• User (Scalability)

There are many different dashboards and working screens across the suite of modules, and there are several functionalities and principals that apply to dashboards/screens as appropriate:

• Tabular and dynamic chart display
• ”Cards” – high level KPI’s with Red, Amber, Green colouring as alerts
• Dynamic filtering
• Dimension toggling
• UOM toggling
• Version toggling
• “Drilldown” and “Reset Drilldown” within hierarchical structure
• Expand/Collapse time buckets e.g. Period/Week
• “Navigate to”, to move between summary Dashboards to low level detail screens with data filtered based on Dashboard selection
• Comments by Type e.g. Assumptions at any level of the Hierarchies and individual Cell Comments. All date, time and user stamped
• Navigation Tables prioritised by KPI/Exception Priority

It is important to have the ability to explore the different planning options available, analyse the results, compare the results of the different options, before committing any changes. This is particularly important to the S&OP/IBP procedure and impacts all parties involved in the process:

• Scenario set up
• Develop Options and record Assumptions, Opportunities and Risks
• Execute Algorithms, if required
• Review results in terms of KPI’s and Exceptions
• Compare the options in terms of KPI’s and Exceptions
• Apply the selected option

There are a number of options available when using the sofco suite:

Supporting Users in their day to day activities by automating key alerts, actions, and communications in a systemised workflow based on triggers and actions::

• Approval processes
• Exception Notifications
• Collaborative Planning
• Plan Publication
• Escalation and Delegation
• Workflow progress for process owners
• Integrated in sofco Application and Office 365

The quality of a plan is greatly impacted by the quality of data it is given. Often the first sign that something is wrong is when the plan results are not as anticipated. This wastes time and causes frustration.

The sofco approach is to get the data right and then start planning. This is accomplished through the Pre Planning dashboard which displays the results of a range of checks that the system has carried out:

• Referential Integrity Checking
• Missing records e.g. Parameters
• Incorrect values e.g. negative when should be positive
• Erroneous - outside of user definable tolerances
• Incompatible e.g. Lot Sizing
• Irrelevant – e.g. Obsolete