In supply chain planning, maturity is often portrayed as a linear journey. Fragmented tools give way to integrated platforms. Manual processes are replaced by automation. End-to-end visibility becomes the inevitable destination.

Experience suggests otherwise.

After leading a large-scale, end-to-end planning transformation at Coty, Dan Smith moved into a very different environment: Orveon, a private-equity-owned beauty business. While many of the operational challenges were familiar, the starting point across People, Process, and Technology was not. That contrast forced a reassessment of what “good” planning actually means — and when.

At Coty, scale justified ambition. Global complexity, long investment horizons, and significant manual effort made a comprehensive transformation rational. Importantly, Coty also had relatively strong people capabilities and well-defined processes. That foundation made it easier to identify where technology investment would genuinely unlock value rather than simply mask underlying issues.

At Orveon, the context was different. Private equity ownership changed the calculus. Investment windows were shorter. Appetite for multi-year payback was limited. Implementation risk carried different consequences. The organisation was intentionally lean, with fewer layers of process definition and less excess capacity.

In that environment, dropping a large, integrated planning platform on top and hoping it would “fix everything” would have been unrealistic.

This distinction matters because many planning transformations fail not due to lack of ambition, but because ambition is misaligned with context. Leaders see peers investing heavily in integrated platforms and assume maturity requires the same path. What works in one organisation is copied into another with very different constraints.

At Orveon, planning strategy shifted away from end-to-end transformation and towards proportionate improvement. Lower-cost tools addressed specific needs. Smaller, AI-enabled capabilities were explored where they could generate fast insight. Integration ambition was deliberately constrained.

This was not a retreat from modernisation. It was a recalibration.

Where Coty invested in architectural coherence and global standardisation, Orveon prioritised speed, signal, and optionality. The goal was not to design a perfect future state, but to improve decision-making without locking the organisation into long, capital-intensive commitments.

This reframing also changed how maturity was understood. An advanced planning organisation is not necessarily the one with the most integrated system. It is the one that understands its constraints — financial, organisational, and temporal — and invests accordingly.

One of the most expensive mistakes leaders make early in a transformation journey is assuming similarity implies suitability. Comparable complexity does not mean identical answers. Ownership model, capital discipline, organisational readiness, and time horizon all shape what “good” looks like.

The right starting question is not “what are others doing?” but “what kind of organisation are we building, and over what timeframe?”

Before testing assumptions or building business cases, leaders need clarity on that point. Without it, even well-designed transformations can overshoot reality. With it, smaller, more focused investments can outperform grand designs.

Planning maturity is not a destination. It is a series of decisions made in context.

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