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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Managment

Leadership Accountability

Supply chain leader and a market leader are sitting at a bar, looking somber and frustrated. Supply Chain Leader: "We need to figure out how to explain our nonperformance to leadership. Any ideas?" Market Leader: "Yeah, we need to come up with something convincing." The supply chain leader starts brainstorming, looking stressed. Supply Chain Leader: "Maybe we can say there were delays in the supply chain due to unforeseen circumstances?" Market Leader: "No, that won't work. We've already used that one before." The market leader takes a sip of their drink, looking pensive. Market Leader: "What about blaming it on…
Debbie Evans
April 9, 2023
Structure

A Reflection on Implementing IBP

My journey with IBP began on Halloween in 2013.  A day to remember as that was the day of the first MBR workshop with the leadership team and it was a day full of challenges, contention, and even hope.    Oliver Wight consultants did their best to keep this group together while being challenged from every imaginable angle but never faltering from the barrage of questions thrown at them like cannons in a war zone.  With much of the tension centered around trust, alignment, behaviors that would need to change for a fully functioning IBP process, and after much deliberation…
Debbie Evans
September 21, 2020
Business

Why Executive Leadership Wins With Integrated Business Plannin

Every executive I know is drowning in data — dashboards, forecasts, KPIs, scenario models — yet still feels like they are flying blind when it matters most. This isn’t a data problem. It’s a decision problem. Integrated Business Planning (IBP) exists for one reason: to give executive leadership a single, trusted version of the business so they can make the right decisions at the right time, before problems become expensive. IBP quietly becomes one of the most powerful leadership tools in a company because it replaces reaction with foresight. Instead of managing by exception — waiting for something to break…
Debbie Evans
January 29, 2026
CapabilityIntegrated Business Planning

Why is my Integrated Business Planning process not working?

Why is my Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process or Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process not seem to work? I have encountered many frustrated IBP or S&OP leaders with a question on why they seem to have a good output from their monthly IBP or S&OP process, which includes an agreed plan that balances demand planning with supply chain. However, what is actually produced in the plant ends up being completely different. Delivery performance doesn’t seem to improve, commercial teams are frustrated that customer orders are not being fulfilled.  Supply chain leader continues to blame an inaccurate Demand plan, finance…
Debbie Evans
June 14, 2023