Planning software ROI needs finance attribution and post-go-live ownership
A planning-software business case needs one ledger of benefits
In an October 1, 2026 article, Andy Gray of Supply Chain 24/7 reported lessons shared by leaders from Fanatics, Hormel Foods and WHOOP at o9 Solutions' aim10x Americas event. Beyond product fit, their experience points to three enduring accountabilities: who can claim the benefit, who makes planners change their behavior and who supports the system after go-live.
Finance must prevent double-counted inventory savings
Fanatics executive Ben Pivar described a familiar trap: different initiatives each promise to release the same inventory. Summing their forecasts inflates the investment case. A finance partner can assign benefit attribution across projects and reconcile it against observed working capital, service and operating-cost outcomes. Dataleo's implication is to use one benefit register with agreed baselines, attribution rules, timing and exclusions—not competing slide-deck savings totals.
Champions are part of the operating design
Hormel's Nick Schwartz explained that replacing a legacy tool was easier than changing daily habits. Functional champions joined design, testing, training and post-launch support. An o9 recap cited in the article reported 52% fewer deployment overrides and 35% fewer production overrides where champions were in place. Deployment overrides and production overrides are distinct planning override categories, not software implementation stages. Those figures are attributed conference claims, not independently verified causal effects. They nevertheless suggest a useful adoption measure: not just logins, but the reasons planners accept, modify or reject recommendations.
Post-go-live ownership belongs in the original budget
Pivar also warned that a signed-off implementation can leave too little internal capacity for support and minor changes. The investment proposal should explicitly price an enduring product owner, business process owners, data maintenance, change requests and vendor escalation. Without this, the software goes live while responsibility for sustaining its decisions quietly disappears.
WHOOP links sponsorship to problem definition
WHOOP's Marie Fodness described starting with S&OP process work and existing spreadsheets before committing to a product. The CFO asked which operational problems the investment would solve. WHOOP later asked approximately seven vendors to work through real cases. That sequence matters for financial attribution: if the process and the target decision are not defined first, it becomes difficult to establish which improvement came from software rather than process redesign.
An ownership contract for the first year
A stronger approval gate would combine a finance-owned benefit baseline, named functional champions and a funded 12-month operating model. Review savings against actuals at agreed intervals, inspect override patterns, and record who maintains planning assumptions and trains new users. The principal failure mode is a business case whose benefits are credited several times while no one owns the system after the project team leaves.
Source and credit: Andy Gray, Supply Chain 24/7, October 1, 2026, “Six Things to Consider Before Buying Planning Software”. The article reports participants' accounts; Dataleo's ownership framework is independent analysis.