Category

Business

Business

Finance and Integrated Business Planning

The real value of integrated business planning (IBP) is the ability to establish credible plans that enable the business leadership to make the appropriate tactical and strategic decisions that aligns with the business’s ambitions over the long-term horizon.   To accomplish this, the IBP process requires transparency of bottom-up plans with credible assumptions that can be financialized that leadership trusts.   Unfortunately, integrating finance into the IBP process can be challenging for an array of reasons that often result in financial leaders becoming frustrated.  This frustration is recognized when you hear comments such as, “the business doesn’t know how to plan”, or…
Debbie Evans
June 1, 2021
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
man reading newspaper while sitting near table with smartphone and cupBusinessPlanning

Planning for uncertainty, responding with agility

“We have implemented Integrated Business Planning (IBP) but our performance doesn’t seem to be improving, why is it not working?”   This is a common frustration for many organizations that have embarked on the journey of IBP to obtain this miraculous alignment between supply and demand only to be left with minimal performance improvement.  In the early days of an IBP implementation the focus is hyperinflated on the business’s ability to demand plan within reasonable level of accuracy and eliminating bias, however determining the reasonable level of accuracy can often be subjective.   A supply chain manager that expects 98% accuracy in…
Debbie Evans
May 5, 2021
BusinessIntegrated Business PlanningOperations

The Importance of Capable People in the IBP Process

Integrated business planning facilitates a systemic cadence that enables leadership to make the appropriate business decisions to achieve their long-term ambitions.   This is accomplished by aligning plans, understanding assumptions, evaluating opportunities and vulnerabilities, and perpetually reviewing the different scenarios for optimization.  Too often during an IBP implementation, the process is focused on establishing the various reviews centered on the mechanics of the process rather than the intent.  The process itself will not yield the desired results for the business, it is dependent on the right capability of the people to be thoughtful about what is important for discussions.  Consider…
Debbie Evans
September 24, 2020