A company’s ability to react quickly and accurately to volatile market conditions is a true measure of an organization’s competitive advantage. Let us take a closer look at Integrated Business Planning and how the SAP solution enables this process.
Integrated Business Planning is the practice of bringing together different elements of planning across an organization into a single process used to address challenges, risks, and opportunities. SAP's Integrated Business Planning solution supports this practice.
The balance of demand and supply is typically associated with SAP Sales and Operations Planning. However, SAP Integrated Business Planning extends the principles of SAP Sales and Operations Planning across the supply chain by using advanced demand and supply planning, which integrates with financial plans and links a strategic plan with operational execution.
Supply Chain Monitoring and Integrated Business Planning
SAP offers a comprehensive Integrated Business Planning solution, some of it's features include:
The complete model, which spans demand, finance, and supply chain planning. It is a flexible model that provides easy access using the analytic capabilities of Microsoft Excel. The model is easy to reconfigure and is based on SAP HANA, which provides scalability and the ability to handle large data volumes and calculations.
Scenario planning and comparison with multiple plans is possible in real time at both a detailed and an aggregate level due to SAP HANA. We also offer a what-if simulation, which is available to a planner at any time and across the entire model. SAP HANA provides a significantly faster in-memory computing platform than any other on the market.
- Intuitive UIs that are available through Web, Microsoft Excel, and Mobile support. These are quick and accessible and have real-time visibility and flexible planning.
SAP Sales and Operations Planning and Integrated Business Planning
SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) for Supply Chain is a world-class solution for supply chain monitoring, sales and operations planning, demand management, inventory planning, supply planning, and response management. SAP Sales and Operations Planning is the core of Integrated Business Planning. This process aligns demand and supply to drive a business outcome.
It has become increasingly important for businesses to power growth, resiliency, and efficiency. Several maturity models have been developed by analyst companies to determine the different stages of SAP Sales and Operations Planning, which include the following:
Creating a feasible plan
Matching demand with supply
Driving the most profitable response
Building demand-driven supply chain capabilities
Orchestrating through market driven value networks
Optimizing inventory
Key Principles
SAP provides a solution to cover all six stages of the above planning process. This approach includes the following key principles:
Analytical capabilities:
Analytical capabilities are embedded in the process so that users can directly view and analyze the impact of the various demand and supply scenarios that are available, without needing to change between systems.
Simplicity in the UI:
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are embedded in the solution and avoid the need for a separate spreadsheet program.
Real-time scenario planning:
Integrated Business Planning is built natively on the SAP HANA platform.
Integration between SAP Business Suite and external third party tools:
SAP Integrated Business Planning can be integrated with different systems so that data types such as master data, order data, and POS data can be exchanged.
Functional Areas
The following list describes the scope items in the out-of-the-box Integrated Business Planning sales and operations model provided by SAP:
- Demand review
- Supply review – heuristic
- Reconciliation review
- Management business review
- Forecast error calculation and analysis
- Time-series-based forecast consumption
- Footprint analysis