What Leaders Can Learn at the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit
Global manufacturers are under pressure to scale, diversify, and react faster than ever. Disruptions aren’t slowing down, product portfolios keep expanding, and teams are expected to make high-stakes decisions with imperfect information.
That’s the backdrop for one of the most anticipated sessions at this year’s Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit: “Embracing Change: Jazwares’ Journey to S&OP Success,” led by Francesca Noh, VP of Integrated Business Planning at Jazwares.
It’s a story every planning leader will find familiar, but the way Jazwares solved it is what sets this session apart.
The Challenge: Explosive Growth Meets Spreadsheet Reality
Jazwares, a Berkshire Hathaway company and the fastest-growing toy manufacturer in the world, manages a global portfolio of beloved brands, including Squishmallows.
As sales surged, so did the complexity. Forecasting and inventory planning were still being managed in spreadsheets across global teams. The consequences were predictable:
- Slow, inconsistent decisions driven by disconnected data
- Limited visibility between demand, supply and actuals
- Inflexible ERP-driven workflows that couldn’t keep up with real-world changes
- High stakes inventory risk, service pressure and a rapidly expanding product mix
Scaling globally without losing control required more than a new process. It required a new foundation.
What Changed: One Integrated System, Built for Real-World Planning
Jazwares turned to Arkieva to replace spreadsheet chaos with a single, flexible system that could keep pace with the business.
With Arkieva, they created a centralized planning environment that connects demand, inventory, and operations data across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, giving every team the same, trustworthy view in seconds.
Key shifts from the transformation:
✔ A unified source of truth for global demand and inventory
Bottom-up and top-down forecasts now align across regions, product lines, and planning horizons.
✔ Faster, more confident decision-making
What used to take hours or days: manual reconciliations, performance checks, inventory reviews, now happens instantly.
✔ Cross-functional adoption
Brand, product development, procurement, and leadership all use the same data to make smarter calls, faster.
✔ Standardized S&OP processes
Teams across four continents now operate with the same cadence, logic, and visibility.
✔ Forecast error reduced below 10%
A direct outcome of replacing manual processes with standardized, transparent forecasting.
This is what “embracing change” looks like: not a process tweak, but a structural shift toward speed, clarity and resilience.
Sharing Jazwares Transformation at Gartner
Sessions at the Gartner Supply Chain Planning Summit are full of predictions, frameworks, and trends. But what most leaders want is proof that real companies are actually doing this well.
Jazwares is one of those companies.
Francesca’s session will dig into:
- How to lead a transformation when every region has its own way of planning
- How to standardize S&OP without stifling local decision-making
- How to align leadership around data instead of instinct
- What it really takes to shift teams out of Excel and into a scalable system
- The role of flexibility, in sustaining growth
And, importantly: what planning leaders should change first when the old tools stop keeping up. If you’re managing growth, complexity or global coordination, this session hits the mark.
Why Arkieva Is Part of This Conversation
Jazwares didn’t need a massive software overhaul; they needed a planning system that could keep pace with a business growing across regions, product lines and partners.
That’s where Arkieva fits. Our platform helped them move from spreadsheet-heavy workflows to a centralized environment that actually supports day-to-day decisions: clean demand signals, aligned forecasts and a clear view of inventory and supply across teams.
The value wasn’t in “features.” It was in providing planners and leaders with a reliable system that responds quickly, adapts to changes, and removes the bottlenecks that were slowing decisions.
That’s the type of real, operational improvement attendees come to the Gartner Summit to hear about, and it’s exactly what this session demonstrates.
Heading to the Summit? Don’t Miss This Session.
Embracing Change – Jazwares’ Journey to S&OP Success
Presented by: Francesca Noh, VP of Integrated Business Planning, Jazwares
If you want to see what modern S&OP looks like: purpose-built, flexible, fast and actually adopted, this session should be on your schedule.
And if you’d like to see how the system behind this transformation works in practice, stop by the Arkieva booth or book time with the team.
Because when the business is changing rapidly, the planning process needs to change with it.
Want a deeper look before the Summit?
Read the full case study or connect with our team for a walkthrough of the solution behind Jazwares’ global S&OP success.
