Every two years or so, there is a new crop of three-letter acronyms in manufacturing IT. Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is certainly one of the hot "TLAs" in recent years. So naturally, many technology vendors and consultants are trying to jump on the S&OP bandwagon. This rush to embrace S&OP has lead to some confusion as to what this remarkable discipline really entails. In this white paper, we will clarify what S&OP is and what it is not. We will also examine how enterprise software like ERP can facilitate S&OP, and what functional requirements are necessary to make it work.