Integrated Business Planning

Let’s Rethink How We Manage Business

 

IBP is provocative, challenging, and, at times, contentious, yet the benefits are unquestionable. We have experience navigating the dynamics which impede IBP implementation in a variety of different businesses. This experience affords us the opportunity to help others take the concepts of IBP and provide pragmatic operational solutions, avoiding rabbit-holes, minefields, and some of the frustration associated with the deployment.  This site is created to provide online support, answer questions, and help others on their IBP implementation journey.

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OperationsStructure

The S&OP Merry-Go-Round

“Demand and supply are happening at the same time, don’t separate them integrate them”. The notion that ‘demand’ occurs and ‘supply’ responds is a fallacy, in fact, the two are symbiotic whereby one is as dependent upon the other as much as the other on the one. These two entities have a mutually beneficial relationship that should, must, be leveraged however there’s one significant issue; they speak different languages. When I say ‘different languages’ I don’t mean variants of the Germanic language, I mean one speaks Klingon and the other Dothraki. Although by no means an expert linguist I can’t…
Kim Britton
October 6, 2020
Integrated Business Planning

Challenges Implementing Integrated Business Planning

Implementing an Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process is a complex and challenging initiative. IBP is a strategic management process that aligns an organization's planning and execution functions across all levels of the organization. This process provides a framework for companies to integrate their business strategies, financial planning, demand and supply planning, and operational planning. However, implementing an IBP process can be challenging, and organizations may encounter several obstacles in the process. In this article, we will discuss some of the significant challenges that companies face while implementing an IBP process. Challenges of implementing an IBP process: Organizational culture: Organizational culture…
Debbie Evans
April 1, 2023
Planning

What happens when there is no supply plan?.

Stripping back all the frills and thrills you are left with the core purpose of IBP; to converge, align and integrate the financial plan, demand plan and supply plan. So, what happens when the supply plan changes daily, that is, there really is no static supply plan? However absurd this might sound, it’s not as uncommon as perhaps you might think. For business with large SKU proliferation, servicing a large distribution network or customer base, typical of FMCG organizations or OEM aftermarket channels, it is not unusual to allow orders to flow directly into the production planning processes. Perhaps, there…
Kim Britton
April 7, 2021
Operations

Order Control Gone Haywire: A Hilarious Guide to managing orders during a constrained supply situation

One of the challenges in the Integrated business planning (IBP) process is aligning the outcome of the monthly IBP process with the short-term tactical horizon.  It happens like this:  The demand review from the commercial team provides an unconstrained demand plan.  Supply Chain review responds with their known constraints that cannot be overcome, it is decided that the commercial team is then forced to constrain the demand plan and then supply chain is able to develop a supply plan that is both realistic and achievable.  The process works great! Right?  But not so fast, the customer, aware that there is…
Debbie Evans
July 12, 2023