Many businesses, large and small, have a huge source of great ideas that can help them improve, innovate, and grow, and yet so many of these companies never think of using this amazing corporate asset. What is this highly valuable asset? Its own people.

Says Morgan Fraud, the author of The Thinking Corporation, “Given that we are all capable of contributing new ideas, the question becomes how do you successfully generate, capture, process and implement ideas?” Becoming an organization capable of answering this question can benefit in a number of ways

Growth through innovation/creativity. Rather than be constrained by ideas for new products, services and new markets coming from just a few people, a Thinking Corporation can tap into the employees.

The effort vastly improved the company’s planning and execution functions, created and implemented a new stock policy that accounted for specific SKUs and key variables, streamlined the order preparation process and reduced distribution transport times.

Supported by a robust sales force and tight cost controls, Pharm Ltd. experienced sustained double-digit growth over a number of years, only to find that their supply chain struggled to keep pace. In particular, the initial state of the company’s sales.

In particular, the initial state of the company’s sales and operations planning capabilities limited their ability to account for demand variability or raw material lead times in production and distribution. Improve sales and operations and production planning.

The teams focused their efforts on a few of the highest-value S&OP levers in order to review the current planning process, identify gaps in the planning infrastructure and analytically understand demand and supply variability.