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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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
Business

“You can’t ship to last Tuesday” — Why Past-Due Orders Don’t Belong (and how they drive planners out of the system)

Time travel isn’t a supply strategy. Yet many ERPs carry past-due production, purchase, and transfer orders—ghost promises from yesterday. Keeping them doesn’t make you on time; it breaks your ERP, corrodes behavior, and pushes planners to run the business in spreadsheets. Here’s why those zombies need to go—and what to do instead. Why past-due is poison A past-due order is an open supply order with a due date earlier than today. Every day it remains late, your system pretends yesterday had infinite capacity and suppliers teleported parts. Cute fiction; ugly consequences. What it does to your ERP Lies to Sales…
Debbie Evans
October 6, 2025
BusinessIntegrated Business Planning

Challenges of IBP

After 8 years implementing, coaching businesses and designing Integrated Business Planning (IBP) processes I have accumulated a long list of common challenges that often plague IBP deployments.   To understand all the challenges it is important to understand the intent and purpose of IBP. To contextualize how IBP should work in a business it is best to illustrate with an example.  Let say you want to grow your business from $500M to $1B in 3 years while maintaining a 15% EBITDA.   This is the focus to which the IBP process is centered for all the 5 steps, product portfolio review, commercial…
Debbie Evans
May 24, 2021
Integrated Business Planning

What Covid-19 taught us about IBP

Implementation of an Integrated business planning (IBP) process in a large matrix organization is far from short on challenges and even after several years these challenges often persists.  Navigating the dynamics of an organization that has deep seated roots lacking transparency, subterfuge, turf guarding and even egocentric behaviors can plague an IBP process often longer than the organization has the patience to endure.   How is it possible to integrate different functions in such an environment where supply chain poor performance is often the result of perceived bad forecast, a sales and marketing team that continues to miss sales targets due…
Debbie Evans
March 24, 2021