Demand and inventory planning is a dark art that even trained S&OP practitioners struggle to understand. Each company goes through a maturity curve as they scale their operations. They will start with a spreadsheet or a combination of a spreadsheet and an ERP system. They might also do a lot of planning inside the ERP, but the development of those reports could be costly, and your planners may still not like to use it due to the rigidity of the ERP systems. As they grow, they need a sophisticated planning system that can talk to the ERP back and forth.In today's episode, our guest, Russ Graf, shares his insights on the inventory maturity curve for manufacturers and distributors. He also discusses how the inventory and S&OP planning differs for manufacturers and distributors. Finally, he discusses how the ERP systems might not have all the datasets the planners need to compute safety stock.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.