Sleep Number - Three Phase Build in Anaplan Creates Cohesive Planning

Sleep Number was heavily reliant on MS Excel for all their planning processes across both Finance and Supply Chain departments. This spreadsheet-based method was time-intensive, manual, rigid, and error prone. They were “data rich and insight poor”. Sleep Number’s different forecasts (i.e. sales plan vs. demand plan vs. home delivery plan) were disjointed. With manufacturing operations, an extensive retail network, and an e-commerce channel, Sleep Number needed a solution to produce efficient and accurate data for planning, forecasting and connecting key departments

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The new planning processes are more accurate, efficient, user-friendly, and provide greater insights. Accuracy has improved 5 points at a SKU level nationwide. Forecast cycle times have decreased from a whole day to mere minutes.

The dashboards in Anaplan are easier to navigate than the multiple, large spreadsheets that were being used previously. With the addition of new and more detailed reporting, users can get very surgical with their forecasting and continue to improve accuracy.

Finally, the three models are linked to result in one cohesive plan across both Finance and Supply Chain.

Sleep Number partnered with Accelytics for a three-phase Anaplan build, beginning with Demand Planning, then Sales Planning, and finally HD (home delivery) Planning. From the beginning, the models were built in a scalable manner with an eye to the future.

During the first implementation, a Data Hub was set up with more data than required to plan for future implementations. Anaplan Connect was then implemented to pull actuals data into the Anaplan model, daily and automatically.

Over the 13-week Demand Planning implementation, a model was built to facilitate the monthly Demand Planning process at a SKU and hub level using statistical forecasting. This first implementation also included training and “co-building” with 2 Sleep Number employees. By the end of the build, these employees could maintain and update the models as needed.

The next implementation, Sales Planning, was completed 4 weeks early, in just 9 weeks. This implementation and the next, HD Planning, were also focused on “co-building” with Sleep Number model admins to enable long-term self-sufficiency. The Sales Planning output is imported into the Demand Planning and HD Planning models to act as a starting point for their respective forecasts.