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Business Strategy Series

ISSN : 1751-5637

Article publication date: 8 November 2011

The purpose of this paper is to highlight benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. The paper focuses on need of advanced business intelligence and the crucial role of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. Various case studies are used to highlight benefits.

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The paper focuses on need of advanced business intelligence and the crucial role of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. Various case studies are used to highlight benefits.

Benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management. Case studies are used to highlight benefits.

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Benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management.

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The value of the paper is that there is very little published writing on benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management stressed upon by the use of case studies.

• Business Planning
• Forecasting
• Integrated business process management

Pal Singh Toor, T. and Dhir, T. (2011), "Benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management", Business Strategy Series , Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 275-288. https://doi.org/10.1108/17515631111185914

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Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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• DOI: 10.1108/17515631111185914
• Corpus ID: 154181567

Benefits of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management

• Tajinder Toor , Teena Dhir
• Published 8 November 2011
• Business, Computer Science
• Business Strategy Series

15 Citations

Enabling integrated business planning through big data analytics: a case study on sales and operations planning, comparative analysis of the main business process modeling methods: a bibliometric study, the roles of business process modeling and business process reengineering in e-government, application of artificial intelligence in forecasting: a systematic review, business process management - bpm: exploração dos artigos brasileiros sob a ótica da bibliometria, analysis of supply chain vulnerability factors in manufacturing enterprises: a fuzzy dematel approach, business process management - bpm:exploração dos artigos brasileiros sob a ótica da bibliometria business process management - bpm: exploration of the articles brazilian under the optical of bibliometrics, improving the business trajectory among small and medium size construction firms in south africa, processes and optimization approaches for integrated strategic planning of operations at automotive manufacturers: impact of product platforms and modularization, arimax model for forecasting maintenance work (amfm): a multi-stage seasonal arimax model for workorder time series forecasting, 3 references, integrated business-process driven design for service-oriented enterprise applications, business process modeling, simulation and design, business process management (bpm) standards: a survey, related papers.

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Integrated Business Planning and Process Management

Many firms’ planning procedures are disjointed, resulting in a lack of visibility and efficiency across all departments. This leads to a significant loss of time, energy, and money. It is important for all types of companies to  establish a suitable operations system  and processes so they can better track their inventory, save money, and offer better services to their customers.  However, times are changing, and forward-thinking businesses are embracing digital transformation and implementing an  integrated business planning (IBP) strategy . In this article, we’ll look at what IBP is and the advantages of using it. We’ll focus on the importance of integrated business planning, forecasting, and process management, as well as the necessity for enhanced business intelligence. 

What Is Integrated Business Planning?

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a straightforward method for making sound decisions as it creates the structure for an organization to define its key strategies and critical performance benchmarks. The structure in which the organization defines its key strategies and critical performance benchmarks provides a common starting point for drawing up operational plans for core functions such as trading and supply chain teams. A key characteristic of the IBP process is that it drives alignment of these plans towards common goals and assumptions at top and corporate levels and ensures that the bottom-up foundations of operational plans are reconciled and agreed upon.

IBP is an approach that incorporates financial and operational data from across the organization, taking into account the best practices of managing and leveraging them. It brings together financial and operational information by connecting strategic planning with sales, operational, and financial plans, and allows businesses to maximize their output by increasing visibility of resources, optimizing capabilities, and improving overall performance. An organization can use IBP to create a shared go-to-market strategy that all departments can support. 

Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) Vs. Integrated Business Planning

S&OP and IBP’s goal is to come to an agreement on a single operating plan, to which the management team’s executives are held accountable in the allocation of critical resources such as people, equipment, inventory, materials, time, and money to most effectively satisfy customers in a profitable manner.

The most significant distinction between S&OP and IBP is that IBP begins with the executive level. The IBP process conducts a review each month or planning cycle, in which the management team analyzes the most recent projections, potential gaps in attaining business and strategic objectives, gap closing solutions, and resource predictions to execute the plan. 

IBP provides a planning basis that replaces the traditional monolithic annual financial planning process with an agile and easy approach. The structured process involved in building an IBP approach allows companies to focus on making well-informed decisions and take the best action on these decisions. In addition, IBP enables a company to incorporate insights from supply chain forecasts, financial projects, and strategic plans, regardless of how financial, supply, demand, and value chain functions need to be modeled. This enables an agile and responsive adaptation of operational business plans. Now that we’ve established what IBP can mean for your business, we’ll guide you through the process step-by-step.

The Integrated Business Planning Process

Step1: determine what is preventing the company from progressing..

IBP requires self-control. You should set budgets or invest only on projects that help the organization achieve its strategic goals. The same can go for products. That could mean retiring a line that is still profitable but has limited growth potential.

The IBP process firm begins to  look at it in terms of the company’s entire health and welfare, rather than optimizing a function at the cost of the company’s total benefits over time. Companies that get the most out of IBP use it as a cross-functional, collaborative management approach led by the executive team for running the business. In today’s fast-changing environment, the IBP process provides the organization with the essential nimbleness to deal with and handle business difficulties. The IBP system makes it easy to find discrepancies between predicted and actual performance, allowing for quick fixes and, in some cases, resource shifts. Better resource use and accurate forecasting allow IBP to conduct a demand review cycle to identify the trade-offs.

Step 2: Educate and engage your personnel. 

IBP requires self-control. You should set budgets or invest only on projects that help the organization achieve its strategic goals. The same can go for products. That could mean retiring a line that is still profitable but has limited growth potential. 

Step 3: Create a system for prioritizing projects and products. 

Once the top team commits to a set of goals, the enthusiasm must filter down through the ranks. Success will be elusive until everyone is dedicated to Integrated Business Planning. A structured employee engagement program will keep employees committed to the company’s success and actively strive to achieve their business goals effectively. IBP success is based on close collaboration, frequent communication, and KPI responsibility. It’s a cultural transformation that will take time to spread across the organization. 

Step 4: Product planning, supply chain optimization, and sales strategy meetings should all include finance. 

Step 5: adopt ibp-supporting technology and tools., benefits of integrated business planning.

• Integration  is problematic due to technological and process frameworks. The structure of traditional software solutions varies, making integration difficult. Cloud-based technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are the source of removing technological barriers, which traditional methods continue to play a significant role in discouraging companies from using IBP. 
• A diverse skill set is required . Modeling a complex supply chain sometimes necessitates difficult code and provides no visualization; therefore, optimization strategies present obstacles.
• Within the organization, there are  various cultures . Understanding another unit’s objectives while attempting to achieve one’s own seems unattainable
• Tools for managing linear scenarios  like optimization can’t reproduce real-world complexities or recognize that what-ifs aren’t linear. Scenario analysis helps companies integrate their supply chain plans for finance, production, procurement, sales, and marketing. IBP enables companies to find optimal scenarios in addition to optimizing the existing business method. 
• Spreadsheets  are used as a key planning tool, but continuing to use spreadsheets as-is creates an inflexible resource that is unable to integrate and align corporate goals. 
• Data quality, access, and management are all hampered by  inflexible solutions . Solutions are built to work in a specific way, frequently in opposition to the company, which means that data access, quality, and administration are all dependent on the system

Overcoming the obstacles to IBP implementation begins with an awareness of the benefits that IBP offers. An integrated business platform can help the organization overcome these obstacles by allowing it to improve its decision-making capabilities. Let’s delve deeper into the benefits:

Strategy Alignment

IBP aligns strategic goals with financial and operational activities. It enables departments to see where their actions fit into the overall picture and collaborate toward a single goal with complete visibility of what the organization intends to achieve.

Transparency

This procedure creates transparency over the relationship between different departmental outputs. This allows a single shared view of data and the ability to run scenarios to see how an increase or decrease in production quantity, headcount, sales, marketing campaigns, and other factors affect financial results and other departmental outputs. 

Accountability

IBP also ensures more accountability. It lets employees become more aware of their actions and their influence on the company and understand how their efforts contribute to the shared go-to-market strategy.

IBP provides better insights after a corporation has accumulated enough data, making planning and operations considerably more transparent, improving customer satisfaction as a result. By using new technology, such as real-time sensor data and machine learning (ML) pattern recognition, you can detect and notify stakeholders of unplanned occurrences before they have an impact on the organization. All of these advancements are dependent on cloud-based technologies, and they help streamline planning procedures and centralize financial and operational data so finance teams can swiftly distribute updates.

Why Adopt IBP

For companies to succeed with IBP, they need to advance their decision-making end-to-end to optimize their financial returns. IBP is a procedure that reflects end-to-end business goals by taking into account each business silo and its numerous activities. Enterprises obtain a single holistic plan that unites the business through IBP, which connects corporate performance management, financial planning procedures, and operational planning systems in a smooth manner. This business plan improves business alignment by discussing performance strategies and aids in the quantification of business risk, allowing businesses to react to new problems quickly.

Integrated business planning is the optimal solution for companies that use scenario mapping, have complex supply chains, and want to effectively achieve their business goals. It involves the use of data-based forecasts for planning the supply chain, operation, sales, and marketing. Companies that switch to integrated business planning software solutions will benefit from the tools they need to match supply and demand and optimize their business plans for future success. They can include demand planning software, demand forecasting software, and supply chain software to support forecasting and analysis. 

Planning your business is important because it leads you to make changes and decisions about your business based on future projections. Many have observed that the traditional format of business planning does not work in today’s integrated and connected world, which is why there is no better time to integrate this new planning method into your organization and take advantage of the IBM platform. Contact us at  Universal Creative Solutions  to get started on your business plan and strategy today.

What is Integrated Business Planning?

The origins of integrated business planning, how integrated business planning differs from traditional business planning methods.

• How Integrated Business Planning Aligns FP&A with Overall Business Strategy
• Strategic Role of FP&A

Enhanced Decision Making

• Benefits of IBP for FP&A Teams

1. Better Budget Processes

2. improved forecast accuracy, 3. agility and responsiveness, 4. cross-functional collaboration, 5. resource optimization.

• Key Elements of Effective Integrated Business Planning for FP&A Teams

Accurate Demand Forecasts

Scenario planning and sensitivity analysis, performance management, technology and data integration, cross-functional communication.

• How IBP Connects FP&A and Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A)

IBP as a Bridge

Collaboration across functions.

• Future of FP&A with IBP and xP&A
• Embracing Integrated Business Planning in FP&A

Additional Resources

Integrated business planning (ibp) in fp&a.

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) enhances financial planning, forecasting, decision-making, and strategic alignment between finance and other business functions

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a strategic approach that aligns various functions within a company — such as finance, operations, supply chain, and sales — into a unified planning process. It’s designed to ensure that all business units work together towards common goals, improving decision making, resource allocation, and overall business performance.

Within Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) , IBP is a potential game-changer. IBP allows FP&A professionals to forecast more accurately, make data-driven decisions, and ensure alignment between financial strategy and the company’s broader strategic objectives. This alignment helps businesses achieve financial targets and drive sustainable long-term performance.

As businesses increasingly rely on Integrated Business Planning, FP&A professionals who can adopt this approach can make significant contributions and create strategic value for their organizations.

Key Highlights

• Integrated Business Planning (IBP) breaks down silos, unifies various business functions, and ensures alignment between FP&A and overall business strategy.
• IBP supports improved forecasting accuracy and scenario analysis so FP&A teams can better anticipate outcomes, optimize resource allocation, and deliver realistic and strategically aligned financial plans.
• Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A) and IBP expand the scope of traditional FP&A to integrate cross-functional business insights, positioning FP&A professionals as significant contributors to driving strategic value.

Integrated Business Planning has its roots in Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), a process that emerged in the 1980s. S&OP was initially developed to align production and sales, ensuring that supply met demand efficiently. The process focused primarily on balancing supply-chain management with market demand.

As businesses grew more complex, the limitations of S&OP became apparent. Organizations needed a more comprehensive approach that included financial and business strategies in addition to sales and operations planning. IBP emerged as an extension of S&OP, combining financial planning, strategic planning, sales, and operations planning into a unified process.

IBP stands apart from traditional business planning by breaking down silos, maintaining a dynamic and responsive approach, and ensuring that planning efforts are strategically aligned with the company’s long-term goals. This makes IBP a far more effective approach to modern business planning, particularly for organizations seeking to remain competitive in today’s fast-paced market.

How Integrated Business Planning Aligns FP&A with Overall Business Strategy

Strategic role of fp&a.

FP&A has evolved from a purely financial function to a critical player in shaping and supporting business strategy. FP&A teams are expected to go well beyond budgets and forecasts to driving strategic decisions that impact the company’s long-term success.

IBP as a Strategic Tool

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) empowers FP&A to connect financial goals with the company’s broader business objectives. By integrating financial planning with operational and strategic plans, IBP ensures that FP&A’s budgets and forecasts are aligned with the company’s overall strategy. This alignment helps the organization allocate resources more effectively, prioritize investments, and achieve strategic goals.

With IBP, FP&A teams can use cross-functional data and insights to provide more accurate and actionable recommendations. This data-driven approach enhances decision making across the entire organization, enabling leaders to make informed strategic choices based on comprehensive, integrated financial and operational information.

Benefits of IBP for FP&A Teams

IBP ties operational plans to financial outcomes, enabling FP&A teams to develop budgets that are aligned with the company’s strategic goals. This budgeting process ensures that financial plans are realistic and achievable, based on integrated data from various business functions. Creating budgets that are aligned with strategic objectives, managing financial resources, and setting financial targets that drive business performance.

IBP enhances the accuracy of financial forecasts by integrating data from various business functions. This comprehensive view allows FP&A teams to create more precise and reliable forecasts that reflect the current state of the business. By using up-to-date information, FP&A can anticipate financial outcomes more effectively, reducing the likelihood of surprises and improving overall financial planning.

The dynamic nature of IBP enables FP&A teams to quickly adapt to changes in the business environment. Whether it’s a sudden market shift, a new competitor entering the space, or an unexpected supply chain disruption, IBP allows FP&A to adjust financial plans in real time. This agility helps the organization stay resilient and responsive, making informed decisions that keep the company on track to meet its goals despite changing circumstances.

IBP fosters collaboration between FP&A and other departments, with key benefits in breaking down silos and ensuring that all parts of the organization are aligned. By working closely with teams across the company, FP&A can develop more cohesive and actionable financial plans. An understanding of financial implications by all departments leads to more effective execution of business strategies with teams working towards the same objectives.

Resource planning ensures the company has the necessary financial and operational resources to execute its strategy. For FP&A, this collaborative planning also involves aligning financial resources with capacity requirements to optimize resource allocation and manage cash flow effectively. Ensuring that financial plans account for resource constraints and capacity needs, thereby supporting efficient and cost-effective operations.

Key Elements of Effective Integrated Business Planning for FP&A Teams

Certain elements are especially critical to effectively implement and leverage IBP in FP&A. Key components include demand planning and forecasting, supply-chain planning, scenario planning, performance management, technology and data integration, and cross-functional communication. These are crucial for FP&A teams to effectively implement and leverage Integrated Business Planning within their organizations.

Integrating accurate demand forecasts into financial planning can directly affect revenue projections, budget planning, and resource allocation. IBP allows FP&A professionals to create more reliable financial forecasts that reflect real customer demand and market conditions, ensuring that financial plans are based on actual business conditions. This integration helps in aligning supply chain, production, inventory management, and sales efforts with financial goals, reducing the risk of over- or underestimating future demand and financial projections.

Example: You work in FP&A at a company planning to expand into a new market.

• As an FP&A professional, you collaborate with sales, marketing, and operations on demand planning to gain insights into customer demand in this market.
• By integrating these insights into your financial forecasts, you can develop an expansion plan that accurately reflects future demand.
• This holistic approach reduces risks and increases the likelihood of greater customer satisfaction and achieving the company’s financial objectives for market expansion.

Scenario planning within IBP enables FP&A professionals to prepare for various business conditions by evaluating potential outcomes based on different “what-if” analyses. By modeling various scenarios and sensitivities — such as changes in market trends, pricing fluctuations, or supply chain disruptions — FP&A can assess the financial impact of each scenario and develop contingency plans. This proactive approach ensures that the company is better prepared to handle uncertainties and make informed strategic decisions.

Example: You work in FP&A for a company that is evaluating whether to launch a new product line.

• Using IBP, you can perform scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis by integrating data from various departments, such as sales, marketing, and operations planning.
• You might create multiple scenarios — such as different market adoption rates or varying production costs — and assess how each scenario impacts the company’s financials, from revenue forecasts to cash flow and profitability.
• Additionally, sensitivity analysis can be used to identify which variables (e.g., cost of materials, pricing strategy) have the most significant impact on the outcomes.
• This comprehensive analysis allows leadership to fully understand the potential risks and rewards under different conditions and make decisions accordingly.

IBP plays a vital role in tracking and reporting financial performance against strategic goals. This component enables continuous monitoring of key performance indicators (KPIs) , variance analysis, and reporting, helping to keep the organization on track to achieve its financial objectives.

By continuously monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) that are aligned with the company’s strategic objectives, FP&A teams can provide management team with timely insights into how well the business is performing. This ongoing performance management allows for quick adjustments to strategies and plans, ensuring that the organization stays on course to achieve its long-term goals.

Effective IBP relies heavily on the use of technology, advanced analytics, and integrated data systems. Advanced software tools that can aggregate and analyze data from across the organization are essential for FP&A teams to develop accurate demand forecasts, conduct scenario analyses, and monitor performance. Advanced analytics, combined with integrated data, ensures that all departments are working with the same information, reducing discrepancies and enhancing the accuracy of financial planning.

Encouraging collaboration and communication across departments is key to the successful implementation of IBP. When finance, operations, sales, and other departments regularly share information and insights, FP&A teams can ensure that financial plans are cohesive and aligned with the company’s overall strategy. This cross-functional communication improves planning accuracy and helps build a unified approach to achieving business objectives.

How IBP Connects FP&A and Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A)

Extended Planning & Analysis (xP&A) expands traditional FP&A beyond finance, incorporating other business functions like operations, HR, sales, and marketing. xP&A creates a holistic approach to planning, aligning all parts of the organization with strategic objectives.

As companies increasingly value integrated planning, xP&A is becoming essential in modern finance. IBP is essential for connecting FP&A with xP&A, fostering integration, and advancing a more strategic approach to the business planning process.

IBP unifies financial, sales, and supply-chain operations and planning, enabling a seamless transition to xP&A. This integration ensures that all planning activities support the company’s overall goals, resulting in a cohesive approach to business planning.

By breaking down silos, IBP enables FP&A to work closely with other teams, leading to more integrated planning and decision making. This collaboration ensures that financial insights are incorporated into operational decisions and vice versa, enhancing overall operational efficiency and effectiveness.

Future of FP&A with IBP and xP&A

Embrace IBP and xP&A practices as your career in finance evolves. Position yourself to lead in a more connected, strategically aligned FP&A environment by developing skills in:

• Communication and cross-functional collaboration.
• Advanced analytics
• Strategic planning processes

Embracing Integrated Business Planning in FP&A

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) aligns financial planning with broader business processes and strategies, breaking down silos and enabling more dynamic and accurate decision making. By integrating demand forecasting, scenario planning, and performance management, IBP enhances FP&A’s effectiveness and serves as a bridge to xP&A, expanding FP&A’s influence across the organization.

As finance evolves, FP&A’s role will become increasingly strategic. Embracing IBP and xP&A is essential for staying ahead. Integrating financial insights with operational data, leveraging advanced analytics, and fostering cross-functional collaboration will position FP&A teams as key drivers of business success. Early career finance professionals who adopt these practices will be well-prepared to lead in this new era of integrated planning.

Thank you for reading CFI’s guide to Integrated Business Planning for FP&A. To keep learning and advancing your career, check out the following resources:

• Extended Planning and Analysis (xP&A)
• FP&A Modeling Best Practices
• FP&A Manager: Skills and Responsibilities
• See all FP&A resources
• See CFI’s FP&A Specialization
• Share this article

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7 Exuberant Benefits of Integrated Business Planning for Businesses

IBP is the process of integrating different systems of a company to align their working and planning towards a single goal and work collaboratively towards that goal. Home > Insight > 7 Exuberant Benefits of Integrated Business Planning for Businesses

In the last blog, we had an overview of Integrated business planning (IBP) . It is the process of integrating all the departments of a company into the planning process. Unlike S&OP, which focuses on planning the sales and operation strategies, IBP takes a holistic approach to planning and including all the aspects of operations and sales, such as product portfolios, customer demand data, logistics, and financial planning. For companies who have successfully implemented the S&OP process and stabilized it, there comes a time when their S&OP process maturity plateaus. This is when companies need to incorporate integrated business planning to take their planning process to the next level. This post will discuss the top seven benefits of integrating business planning into your planning process. Read on.

Table of Contents

• Benefits of Integrated Business Planning
• Agile Business Planning
• Dynamic ‘What If’ Scenarios
• Real-Time Data Rendering
• Collaborative Decision Making
• Cost Improvement

What are the Benefits of Integrated Business Planning?

IBP focuses on managing the decision taken in one area of business that impacts the other areas. It helps create a more collaborative process that allows stakeholders to address the planning in their areas in such a way that it aligns with the overall company goal. Let’s look at the benefits of IBP for companies.

• Real-Time Data Rendering The data must be real-time to get the best results from agile business planning. This means the time lag because manually populating data in spreadsheets cannot be there in IBP. When the database and source systems are integrated, data is automatically updated, ensuring that all the data populated in the planning model is in real time. The latest data helps in better decision-making.
• Better Customer Satisfaction IBP brings more accurate demand forecasting leading to more precise supply and financial planning. This 360-degree capability brings value to the company and the customers and helps combat potential supply chain disruptions and bottlenecks. With the help of integrated business planning, companies can ensure product deployment at the correct times.

Final Words

An industry-wide acceptance of IBP can vouch for the efficiency and efficacy of the process. The implementation of integrated business planning is beneficial for the company; however, it is essential that before implementing it, companies need to implement and stabilize their S&OP strategies. Implementing IBP in one go can be too much for some companies, and it requires too much diligence to implement it correctly.

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Tapping the Power of Integrated Business Planning

In recent years, integrated business planning (IBP) has been gaining traction among companies looking to improve their supply chain strategy. This planning method promises greater flexibility and resilience in a world where disruptions are increasingly unpredictable. But the concept is far from new. Coined in the 1980s by supply chain management consultancy Oliver Wight Americas, Inc., integrated business planning has been helping companies deal with crises for decades. As companies across the board face the complexities of today’s global supply chain, many more are turning to this proven method to build resilience.

Andrea Montecchi, a business advisor at Oliver Wight, cites the COVID-19 pandemic as one reason for the uptick in acceptance of IBP. “The trends in today's environment often generate from the unpredictable nature of where we are,” he says. “As a result of COVID, the supply chain challenges from before manifest themselves now in things like cash and liquidity pressure that have a very short timeline on them. So the desire and need for fast implementation and solutions is alive and well.”

But what exactly is integrated business planning and how can companies adopt it quickly and successfully without causing undue disruption to the daily operations of the business? Montecchi and Ben Sellers, another business advisor at Oliver Wight, offer their insights.

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Your Complete Starter Guide to Understanding Integrated Business Planning

Integrated business planning gives you a 360 degree view of the business by connecting all your business applications. Here's how to get started.

Create flexible and predictable sales forecasts

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) has emerged as the hallmark of businesses undertaking concentrated digital transformation efforts.

While business planning has been a standard part of every organizational strategy, it has been a disjointed process until recently. Different departments ended up formulating their own strategies which impeded the organization's growth potential. Without a cohesive planning process in place, companies were unable to get a 360° look at the business and were unable to plan for the future.

Realizing the bottlenecks created by disjointed business planning, companies are now migrating to IBP as their default strategy.

What is Integrated Business Planning?

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) can be described as a process that offers management a 360° view of organizational functions like sales, marketing, finance, accounting, and others. These insights enable decision makers to prepare a comprehensive strategy to carry the business towards a promising future marked by enhanced growth potential.

Integrated Business Planning (IBP) has been a buzzword in the corporate sector for quite a few years, but its importance has increased exponentially in the last decade. IBP can be considered as a refined mashup of financial planning, operational best practices, and supply chain optimization to not only mitigate the risks but also deliver savings, responsiveness, and speed for the company and improve customer experience .

What is an Integrated Business Strategy?

Integrated Business Strategy (IBS) is a set of processes that companies can employ to bolster their efficiency and competitiveness in the market through expansion in different avenues.

These areas could include logistics, distribution, or competition. Businesses can use the IBS to enhance their sway in the distribution network to forge ahead of the competition and have a strong market presence. When compared, IBP is more focused on creating a cohesive business strategy that is in harmony with organizational objectives, while IBS is more about executing the IBP to achieve the desired goals.

What’s the difference between Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) vs. Integrated Business Planning (IBP)?

There is a constant debate amongst experts if there is any difference between IBP and S&OP. While some argue that these strategies are complementary, there is a slight difference between these two integral tactics. 

S&OP is described as a cross-functional planning process undertaken to maintain the balance between supply and demand through the communication of changes in market demand to management. Finance, production, and supply chain departments utilize this data to optimize their production planning and purchasing decisions. S&OP empowers the organization with shorter lead times, improved management control, better customer service, and superior supply chain management. 

In comparison, it is evident that IBP is an extension of S&OP. Where S&OP is more inward-looking, IBP attempts to strike a balance between internal and external factors. After an organization has achieved a higher maturity level in S&OP, it must embark on the journey towards incorporating IBP as a standard business process. 

What are the key benefits of integrated business planning?

In the modern business environment, management must ensure alignment across cross-functional groups to maintain a competitive edge. IBP helps an entity overcome challenges posed by disjointed business planning to augment the decision-making processes. Some of the noteworthy benefits of IBP are:

• Accountability : Departmental teams are aware of the impact of their actions on other departments and the entire organization. Managers can fix individual responsibilities of employees to determine employee accountability.
• Transparency : IBP offers a consolidated view of data that enables departments to undertake scenario planning for different possible situations in sync with other departments. Such transparency in operations bodes well for the company's future.
• Alignment: With IBP, departments can understand the overall organizational objectives and then align their operations with syncing with those objectives. 
• Optimization : Management can ensure optimal resource utilization by addressing common bottlenecks that impede the operations of multiple departments. 

What is the purpose of integrated business planning?

IBP is a process designed to enhance the efficiency of the decision-making process for the entire organization. It enables management to lay down a detailed plan for managing the enterprise with a long-term horizon. Some of the key aspects that IBP addresses are allocating crucial resources, supply chain management, personnel requirement, financial analyses, and time management to ensure a balance between profitability and customer satisfaction.

IBP is the next step in the evolution of S&OP which in itself originated in the 1980s from supply and demand balancing processes. IBP ensures alignment of all departmental functions to prepare the entity for possible scenarios through accurate strategy deployment and better cooperation between key stakeholders.

Why do you need integrated business planning?

Whether you are a start-up looking to establish a strong presence in the market or an established enterprise interested in consolidating your market position, IBP must be an integral part of your strategy. Companies need IBP to devise a set of concrete actions to achieve different objectives. 

• Quality of inputs, outputs, and processes : Companies can maintain a uniform demand and supply plan that is in sync with the financial goals by attending meetings attended by cross-functional decision makers.
• Organizational capabilities : IBP promotes cross-functional collaboration across multiple layers of the organization to encourage functional excellence and problem-solving.
• Accountability and Performance : IBP helps design incentives to encourage transparency and accountability of performance. Shared metrics made available promote collaboration between key stakeholders. 
• Data systems : IBP promotes integrating data systems across departments to deliver a single point data source for all requirements. Automated data flows and system detection promote real-time decision-making. 
• Process design : IBP helps bridge the gaps left by short-term and long-term planning by enabling flexible strategies for addressing issues arising between these two time horizons. It also promotes strategy via management-level operational planning and target setting. 

How do you implement integrated business planning for your company?

Many companies struggle with implementing IBP as crucial responsibilities and metrics are not aligned across functions. This might pose difficulties with steering the operations collaboratively. Thus, it is important to clearly understand implementing IBP for your company. 

Integrations

To save crucial time and resources for different departments, it is important to select an IBP platform that seamlessly integrates with your existing tech stack. This will help eliminate data transfer errors and reduce data consolidation time, as well as maintain critical data security standards. Therefore, the first and foremost requirement for implementing IBP is to ensure seamless integration of the IBP software with your tech infrastructure, including ERP software, CRM software, Billing Systems, Data Warehouses, and more. 

Consolidating data sources into a single source of information 

Duplicate and inconsistent data sources pose challenges for an organization at multiple levels, leading to a waste of precious resources and impacting the bottom line. It is, therefore, important to have a single source of information that can act as a reference point for multiple departments. After integrating the IBP software with your tech stack, your next focus should be ensuring accurate data collection and aggregation in real time. This approach would provide a single source of truth for all the departments, eliminating errors due to omission or duplication.

Building forecasting models

Forecasting in IBP is used for demand sensing in the short, medium, and long term. To create a forecast model with your IBP software, you must define the algorithms and key figures related to outputs and inputs. A forecast model features three steps, i.e., pre-processing, forecasting, and post-processing. But a forecast model only works as a container of functionality, and it is you who must define its aggregation level and timing of running.

Financial forecasting methods

There are different financial forecasting methods that you can opt for per specific requirements according to different situations.

• Straight Line Forecasting : - This method is used to get a simple view of continued growth at a consistent speed to derive predictions for guiding financial and budget goals.
• Moving Average Forecasting : - This method calculates average performance for different metrics in a specified time frame. Companies use this method for the identification of underlying patterns for varied financial metrics.
• Simple Linear Regression Forecasting : - This method helps create a trend line based on the relationship between an independent and dependent financial variable. 
• Multiple Linear Regression Forecasting : This method uses two or more financial variables to make a projection. This forecasting model helps understand the relationship between different financial parameters and possible outcomes.

Scenario planning

Use your IBP platform to eliminate being caught off guard while executing your strategies. You can run multiple “what-if” scenarios within minutes to analyze the aspects affecting your business. You can create new scenarios using existing scenarios and compare different scenarios per your requirements. Representations like line charts, bar diagrams, tables, and other visualizations can be used for easy understanding of data for informed scenario planning. This allows you to improve the accuracy of predictions based on a single source of truth.

Scheduled imports

With the option of scheduling data imports built-in, IBP platforms are taking the hassle out of data collection and consolidation. With the scheduling option, you can define the import requirements and get all the data presented to you in a consolidated manner. With access to real-time data, you can ensure higher data integrity and accuracy, as well as data access autonomy. You circumvent investing heavily in setting up IT infrastructure, as cloud-based IBP software solutions can operate seamlessly on your existing infrastructure.

Analytics and data visualizations

Why stick to cells, rows, and columns for data analysis when you can access stunning data visualization solutions with your IBP software? Visual analytics helps draw meaningful insights from data by offering multiple ways to look at the same dataset. IBP platforms allow you to clean and enrich your data in seconds, allowing you to spend more time on data analysis and exploration rather than on manual data collection and consolidation.

Building beautiful presentations 

The true value of data analysis lies in the decisions it enables leaders to take. Storytelling, by incorporating the data and visualizations in a beautiful presentation, is essential to reaping the benefits of an integrated planning and analytics platform. You can use your IBP platform to import and export your data from sources including Google Sheets and create impressive presentations that drive positive impact.

Measuring ROI and impact on the business

Always ensure the measurement of return on investment (ROI) with key metrics depending on the use case. For example, your Finance team might have spent several days on data preparation before achieving actual insights from financial reporting. An integrated business platform has the potential to reduce this data prep time by 80% — metrics like this can be a great way to measure your team’s efficiency post implementing an IBP.

Integrated business planning by the department

The best part of an integrated business planning platform is its ability to support a wide array of business use cases - Sales, HR, Marketing, Finance, RevOps, CX, and more:

Finance and FP&A teams 

IBP platforms empower finance teams to build, maintain, and visualize data in real-time to deliver informed forecasts. Finance teams can save considerable time and resources as they can clean and enrich data in seconds and run models in hours instead of days with up to 20x fewer formulas than Excel. 

Revenue and Sales teams 

IBP platforms enable revenue and sales teams to unlock revenue growth potential through flexible financial modeling options. Therefore, teams can spend more time on strategy by reducing planning cycles for non-productive tasks. 

Executives 

Management teams and key executives are empowered to deliver well-rounded business results as the IBP platforms offer a single data source for all stakeholders. With a 360° view of the business, informed decision-making becomes the new standard practice.

Choosing the best business planning software 

To avail the complete benefits of IBP, selecting the best business planning software is essential. When compared based on power, flexibility, and design, Pigment emerges as the clear leader and is trusted by industry leaders across domains.

Pigment is one of the most feature-rich and user-friendly business planning softwares that offers you a one-stop solution for all your planning requirements. 

Pigment allows your teams to be more efficient as they gain single-point access to enriched data and can spend more time on data analysis to draw meaningful insights.

You can quickly create impressive models with real-time previews to bring all the decision makers at speed quickly. You create a seamlessly shared understanding of numbers across multiple departments, breaking down the silos affecting operational efficiency.

Pigment removes the element of surprise from all your decisions as you can forecast and run multiple scenarios to identify suitable opportunities and risks for your business.

Book a demo today and experience the unparalleled power of Pigment for yourself.

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• SAP Integrated Business Planning
• SAP Integrated Business Planning Explained
• The Perfect Planning Guard

SAP Integrated Business Planning Explained (SAP IBP)

SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a Cloud Based solution for supply chain planning designed to help companies streamline and enhance their planning processes. IBP provides a single platform for collaboration and data-driven decision-making, enabling companies to better respond to market changes and achieve their business objectives.

The IBP solution consists of six components that cover all processes within the supply chain.

Supply Chain Control Tower

IBP for Sales & Operations Planning

IBP for Demand

IBP for Response & Supply

IBP for Inventory

Demand-Driven Replenishment

SAP Integrated Business Planning is the successor to SAP APO (Advanced Planning and Optimization) . Where SAP APO primarily focused on optimizing supply chain planning, SAP IBP goes further, providing a more comprehensive and advanced solution for planning and managing the supply chain in one solution.

Supply Chain Challenges

In your company, there are many departments involved in making the planning successful: demand, supply, marketing, finance, management... and they all need to be aligned. However, this is very difficult if you do not have a system that can give everyone a voice.

In addition, you also need to take into account different perspectives: strategic, tactical and operational. The strategic level sets directions and goals for the long term, the tactical level creates aggregated plans to meet the strategic objectives, balances demand and supply, optimizes inventory and creates allocations. And finally, the operational level translates the aggregated plans into detailed plans for the short term (such as priorities for deliveries or confirmations).

SAP IBP for Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP)

In today's rapidly changing world, it is more important than ever for companies to have a clear understanding of demand and supply. With the right planning tools, companies can ensure that they have the right products in the right place at the right time to meet customer demand.

The main component, S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning), helps companies optimize their demand and supply planning processes. The solution provides a single, integrated view of demand and supply data, enabling companies to make better decisions.

As companies can see all relevant data in one place, it becomes easier to see the bigger picture and identify potential problems or opportunities. S&OP is built up of four phases:

Demand review

Supply review

Reconciliation review

Management Review

This way, the solution helps companies make accurate demand forecasts. S&OP uses six different forecasting techniques to make accurate demand forecasts, even in dynamic markets. It also helps companies determine how much they can produce, which raw materials they need, and when they need to purchase them. IBP optimizes supply-side planning to meet demand, taking into account factors such as lead times, costs, and risks. S&OP also offers scenario planning capabilities, meaning companies can create and test different scenarios to see how these would affect demand and supply.

This allows for responding to unexpected events or changes in the market. In the fourth phase of S&OP, it can be determined whether the submitted proposal is in line with the financial objectives and key performance indicators of the company.

Curious about more information on the S&OP module, check out the McCoy TV below.

SAP IBP for Demand Planning

It is crucial for many companies to understand the demand for their products and services. When a company can understand its demand patterns well, it can ensure that it has exactly the right amount of products and services to meet customer demand.

The SAP IBP for Demand module can play a key role in this by supporting companies in optimizing their Demand planning processes. With a range of features and benefits, this solution enables companies to make better-informed decisions about their operations. The SAP IBP for Demand module goes beyond S&OP in demand forecasting and uses advanced algorithms to generate even more accurate demand forecasts. By leveraging these powerful algorithms, companies can benefit from improved accuracy and reliability in anticipating demand patterns. SAP even allows the user to apply external algorithms (from, for example, Python) , which further expands possibilities.

The ability to improve forecasts together is a central benefit of SAP IBP for Demand. Different teams can work together to refine forecasts, allowing input from different departments to be integrated.

These collaboration capabilities lead to more accurate and realistic forecasts, enabling companies to respond more flexibly to changing market conditions.

Also, demand planning with SAP IBP makes 'demand sensing' possible. This provides deep insight into order patterns, allowing companies to refine their forecasts based on historical and current order data. By understanding these patterns, organizations can better respond to specific customer requirements, adapt to changing trends, and above all, optimize their demand forecasts.

SAP IBP for Response & Supply Planning

The term "Dynamic market" is one that has been mentioned more and more often in the last 20 years. Demand fluctuations, supply chain disruptions, and unforeseen events require flexible and proactive planning.

The Response & Supply (R&S) module of SAP IBP offers the possibility to deal with these in the supply chain, to optimize it, and to anticipate changing market conditions in this way.

In this way, demand and supply can be synchronized. With the help of advanced algorithms and real-time data insights, the module enables the user to optimize their supply chain. It enables planners to apply Multi level supply planning. In this way, an effective supply plan for the entire network can be created by modeling across locations and multilevel bill of materials. This enables the planner to decide what should be included in the model and where the supply plan should be limited. Within R&S, three algorithms are available including the unlimited heuristic, prioritization, and optimization. The prioritization and optimization algorithms ensure that the system delivers a feasible and constrained supply plan that takes into account the modeled constraints.

Another strong part of Response & Supply is that it can reduce supply chain risks through tactical rough cut planning. R&S makes it possible to balance demand and supply while taking material constraints into account. Planners can impose constraints on essential resources such as production, transport, and storage, preventing potential bottlenecks.

Improve the Supply Chain Planning of your Company

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It also enables the user to act flexibly through operational response management. For example, it becomes possible to tackle challenges related to material scarcity by using an operational supply plan. This allows supply allocations to be made when material is scarce and sales orders to be reconfirmed to determine realistic availability dates with the delivery run.

The user also gets the opportunity to set up an internal deployment plan based on controlled quantities available for deployment, allowing for prioritization and optimization. With operational response management, 'gating factors' can be investigated, providing insight into the main causes of delays and shortages. The user can then use the web-based interactive planning to adjust the plan and work in a targeted manner. This approach promotes the company's agility and prepares it for success in a dynamic environment.

SAP IBP for Inventory Optimization (IO)

Efficient inventory management is no longer a strange wish in a world where markets are constantly changing, competition is increasing, and costs are rising. For this, companies strive for enough inventory (of the right materials) to guarantee service levels and at the same time not too much inventory to minimize inventory costs.

IBP for Inventory optimization (IO) provides a solution for optimizing inventory levels and achieving high service levels at the lowest possible costs. With the help of advanced algorithms, IBP IO calculates the optimal inventory levels based on various parameters, such as demand variability, service levels, and costs.

Companies are thus enabled to improve their inventories by looking at the whole supply chain, different situations, and types of customers. This allows them to find the right balance between inventory investments and service levels.

SAP IO has a Multi-stage inventory optimization that effectively deals with these problems by buffering errors in the forecast, demand risks, and efficiently managing the uncertainty in the supply chain. This way, the right quantities of inventory can be calculated for different products from finished product to raw material and it can be analyzed how these influence each other.

Because IBP is one integrated solution, it enables companies to collaborate with all departments and suppliers to avoid too much inventory, guarantee service levels, and optimize inventory costs. IO component enables planners to tackle complexity and various constraints, such as service level objectives, batch sizes, and lead times. By using simulations and scenarios, planners can assess the impact of different decisions and constraints.

IO also makes it possible for companies to gain insight into the product network and the geographical distribution of the inventory through built-in analyses. This insight allows IO to enable the user to evaluate causes of inventory levels and take targeted measures to minimize inventory costs and guarantee service levels.

SAP IBP - Supply Chain Control Tower

The supply chain control tower can be a great addition to all the components discussed above. The name Control Tower somewhat implies the function of this IBP component. It gives you a complete picture of your digital supply chain, shows how different domains are connected, and allows you to easily navigate to other parts of SAP such as SAP S/4HANA and SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. The Control tower also addresses the lack of visibility in your entire network. It provides end-to-end monitoring of the supply chain by analyzing current and historical performance, it creates alerts to quickly identify potential problems, it enables you to set up procedure playbooks to follow procedures, view supply network lanes, it offers dashboards with KPIs and intelligent tools for managing custom alerts and issues within the supply chain, and offers the ability to use analyses to address problems in your supply chain.

Another major benefit of the Control tower is that it connects you to your external supply chain partners via the SAP Business Network. This allows you to plan better by taking into account the constraints of your suppliers and quickly respond to alerts. This results in cost savings and improved service levels within your entire supply chain thanks to a responsive planning approach made possible by the Control tower.

SAP IBP - Demand-Driven Replenishment

Finally, the IBP for Demand-Driven Replenishment calculates decoupling points, average daily usage, and buffers for the positioning and sizing of materials to enable the material flow through your supply chain.

DDMRP (Demand Driven Material Requirements Planning) is an advanced planning technique that helps companies effectively manage their inventory levels. Unlike traditional planning systems, DDMRP uses actual demand data instead of forecasts to drive demand-driven replenishment. This ensures better planning accuracy and prevents over or under stocking. DDMRP uses five core components:

Strategic inventory positioning: determines where decoupling points are placed to position inventory at strategic points in the supply chain.

Buffer profiles: defines the required protection at decoupling points to absorb fluctuations in demand and supply. It uses a color-coded buffer model with different zones.

Dynamic adjustments: ensures that buffers can be flexibly adjusted based on market changes and future events. This keeps the inventory level protection optimal.

Demand-driven planning: uses sales orders instead of planned orders to drive demand planning. This ensures better accuracy in planning and prevents overstocking.

Visible and collaborative execution: priorities are assessed, inventory forecasts are checked and custom alerts are checked to manage the execution of the supply chain. Dashboards in SAP IBP provide an overview of the results and analyses.

With SAP IBP, companies can implement DDMRP and benefit from better inventory balance, increased operational efficiency, and improved customer service. DDMRP helps companies reduce the bullwhip effects, optimize inventory levels, and improve the overall performance of the supply chain.

Advantages of SAP IBP

In addition to the six main modules, IBP offers even more advantages. It is a cloud-based platform that runs on SAP HANA, which ensures easy integration with other SAP systems, but can also receive data from various sources at an aggregated or detailed level. Best practices are followed during integration, but on the other hand, it is also a scalable and flexible model.

The user experience is optimal thanks to the Web UI and Excel UI. Planners can create various "what if" scenarios and perform simulations that aid in the decision-making process. All results and information can be viewed in customizable charts and dashboards, and any required KPI can be calculated. And the best part is that it's not a static system, as it follows a roadmap with constant improvements.

SAP IBP Consultancy

As McCoy, we have a team of SAP IBP experts for all your planning issues. Our goal is to help you increase your revenue, reduce your inventory, and work more efficiently by using reliable and always available data. Continue reading to discover how we do this.

SAP IBP Releases Updates

SAP IBP releases quarterly updates to ensure that the platform remains up-to-date with the latest features, improvements, and bug fixes. These release updates provide users with new capabilities and improved performance, enabling them to manage their supply chain planning processes even more effectively.

We have listed some of the releases for you with the most important updates:

SAP IBP Release 2305

SAP IBP Release 2205

SAP IBP Release 2111

SAP IBP Release 2108

SAP IBP Release 2105

Other SAP IBP Content

SAP IBP Real-Time Integration

SAP IBP Intergation with Transportation Management

Improve your Supply Chain Planning with SAP IBP

Discover how SAP IBP can further assist you in transforming your supply chain planning and optimizing your business processes.

Digital Supply Chain Planning Made Easy

Case study ibp inventory, perfect planning guard, watch all our sap ibp video's on mccoy tv.

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What is IBP? (Integrated Business Planning)

Video: What is IBP?

Why is IBP important?

IBP Framework

IBP best practices by o9 solutions

Summary: ibp software by o9 solutions.

Integrated Business Planning is a best-practice process that aligns Commercial, Financial and Supply Chain activities. In doing so, they are performed as coordinated business decisions with the intent to deliver increased revenue, improved service levels, reduced supply chain costs, greater productivity, better cash flow and higher profits. In short: your integrated business planning process (IBP process) will never be the same.

Integrated business planning (IBP) is important because functional and technical silos across organizations result in flawed decision-making. Within every enterprise there are many thousands of decisions being made and business processes to be aligned, resulting in a final business strategy.

Among those decisions are: commercial decisions related to new products, marketing and sales decisions, supply chain decisions (across the full supply chain and supply chain management, related to positioning of material and capacity and then fulfilling customer demand). Last but not least, financial decisions (related to setting budgets and targets, allocating resources and the forecast that you hold to external stakeholders).

Making the right decisions is not easy and many decisions counteract each other, which may lead to poor business outcomes. Let’s look at some of the fundamental challenges that enterprises face.

1. Isolated decisions are being made

Planning decisions need to be made in a synchronized fashion, but for practical purposes organizations sometimes have to create functional planning departments.  For example, the demand planning and supply and operations planning processes are used to manage the supply chain. Then, you have commercial & sales and operations planning processes driving commercial decisions and finally, financial planning processes to set the budgets and targets.

These plannings and processes are the core of functional planning processes, but they are largely operating in silos today.

2. Cycles are not properly synchronized

Not only do organizations have departmental silos, a second challenging factor is that the siloed teams perform their planning processes in what are called ‘planning cycles’.  A business planning process can involve daily planning cycles for operational planning, weekly and monthly planning cycles for tactical planning and annual cycles for strategic planning.

If these planning cycles are disconnected then the execution of each can be flawed and will almost certainly end up deviating from the intended strategy. In short: an integrated business planning process is very important to connect the planning teams, their processes and their schedules.

3. Technology stacks don’t communicate

The third major challenge to successful Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is the decision-making technology stacks. Historically, many technologies have been used to aid enterprise decision-making and performance management. There are data stacks, planning stacks and reporting stacks. Plus, there’s technology for importing data and then technology used for insights, learning and algorithm development.

All of these types of technology aid decision-making and may lead to integrated business planning (IBP). Still, they can also make the lives of business users much more complex and the adoption of integrated business planning (IBP) more difficult to achieve.

Integrated Business Planning

Functional silos, disconnected cycles and separated technology stacks mean that commercial, financial and supply chain decisions are not easily synchronized. As a result, enterprises will typically suffer from service level issues, inventory issues, excess costs in the supply chain and lower returns on investment from marketing and sales spend.

What this translates to is a significant amount of value leakage. Integrated Business Planning is the strategy and methodology of bringing all these planning processes together and connecting them to respond effectively to market risks and opportunities. IBP can help with your business performance – for example supply chain optimization – and help to develop an effective business planning process, enabling the right decisions to be made to reach your company’s business goals.

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Integrated business planning framework

Integrated business planning (IBP) is a journey with many steps requiring a roadmap of prioritized actions that drive quick wins and sustainable benefits. But, before you can plan that roadmap and the business planning process, you need to understand the basic elements of an IBP framework (which we detail below) alongside the benefits each element brings to the table.

Establishment of accountability

The first element to consider is defining the correct roles and responsibilities as well as setting effective governance to ensure the establishment of accountability.  Clear roles, decision rights, policies, and incentives create an atmosphere that enables everyone to work together as an organized unit to achieve the company’s mission.

Alignment with Leadership

The next element is to detail the objectives with a high-level action plan and seek leadership alignment.  Having a clearly defined aim sets the path for integrated business planning (IBP) and defines what IBP will deliver.  Strategic plans, strategic goals, a business strategy as a whole and scenario planning will help with defining a clear mission.

Alignment among the leadership team is vital if integrated business planning is to achieve its goals.  A clear mission provides the pathway people can follow and ensures that the actions and goals are correct, rather than simply the integrated planning process itself.

Achieve Organizational alignment

When processes are cross-functional and designed to align the organization in one desired outcome, you can focus on meeting the goal instead of maintaining the process. This is why both scenario planning and business strategy are important.

You can write down different processes and define operations planning next to financial planning. Still, if the overall strategy is not clear enough, it’s impossible to reach an organized cross-functional process.

Build Talent base

Build a talent base with the skills and core competencies essential to IBP, such as strategic planning, financial planning, and supply chain planning. With skilled and experienced employees on board, you’ll be able to implement IBP across the enterprise more effectively.

Not only that, but new possibilities will equate to new opportunities and the imagined future state will garner enthusiasm and bring new energy to the business.  Successful Integrated business planning will transform process efficiency and motivate the workforce to achieve even greater improvements.

Real-time analytics

With access to real-time analytics, you can run “what-if” scenarios, quickly respond to disruptions and market adjustments, and make insight-driven decisions the core of your business planning. This helps you to be proactive and stay ahead of your market instead of relying on reactive decisions. This way, tasks like financial forecasting and predicting business performance become simpler and easier.  Scenario planning encourages thinking about ranges of possibilities.  Allowing planning teams to have a recognised and structured approach to future states reduces the likelihood of being blindsided by events and being unable to react to risks or leverage opportunities.

Usage of technology

Since IBP is a cross-functional initiative, you need an agile, flexible, cloud-based technology to provide a central platform for IBP collaboration and execution.  Next-generation planning solutions will provide advanced AI/ML capabilities, but equally important for integrated business planning should be the collaborative functionality, dashboards, volume-to-value conversions, metrics and exception handling, automation, performance and security.

The technology you use for implementing integrated business planning throughout your entire business should not only help supply chain management, but also the integrated processes used by the highest management team.

o9 solutions came up with a single integrated plan for all planning processes across the horizon. o9’s Graph Cube Data Model allows for aggregation and disaggregation to the right level of detail for each planning horizon to support end-to-end synchronization.

09 solutions offers  IBP software  that can be used throughout the entire organization and will solve the future demand of business-wide business planning. A few reasons why this software works:

Complete P&L and KPI visibility

The software summarizes scenarios with connected financial KPIs and strategic plans. It understands financial metrics, such as margins, revenues, and working capital and molds this into operational data.

With the help of the Graph Cube Data Model, most companies can use financial performance, financial reasoning and reconciliation within the integrated planning process of your business.

Cross-functional and interactive plan review & publication

o9’s integrated business planning uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) based search & discovery. With this IBP process platform, you can create interactive views instead of static dashboards and turn cross-functional processes, review and alignment into a fluid process.

Live on platform meeting capability

Your management or business leaders can create live presentations step by step with live data for S&OP meetings, removing hundreds of hours of manual work. The business planning process will take up less time, and the complex supply chains and their ways of working will be easier to understand.

Big data enabled

With the help of the IBP software, you can leverage real-time structured and unstructured data from the market, customers, and operations to drive insights into trends and potential disruptions and thus set up a strategic plan for the future.

o9 Solutions’ Integrated Business Planning provides an intelligent, automated planning solution that bridges all the functional silos across the planning cycles in a unified technology stack that can drive up user adoption and enable better decision-making.

o9’s Integrated Business Planning solution uses automation to bring together finance, marketing, sales, and supply chain to address risk and opportunities in an online live platform.

It provides full visibility and complete transparency on the gap vs. the annual strategic plan in revenues, cost, margin and volumes, and therefore enables management to quickly come up with a strategic plan and informed decisions. This results in predictive analytics, profitable growth that balances strategic, financial and operational objectives and many more benefits for your business.

Want to learn more about Integrated Business Planning (IBP)?

View our collection of white papers regarding IBP, tailored to your industry.

About the author

o9 Solutions is a leading AI-powered platform for integrated business planning and decision-making for the enterprise. Whether it is driving demand, aligning demand and supply, or optimizing commercial initiatives, any planning process can be made faster and smarter with o9’s AI-powered digital solutions. o9 brings together technology innovations—such as graph-based enterprise modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for scenario planning, collaborative portals, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery—into one platform.

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6 Benefits of an Integrated Budgeting and Planning Process

Breaking down budgeting and planning.

The technology supporting accounting and finance has come a long way since the release of ERP systems and Excel. Due to the inflexibility of ERP systems, companies were forced to rely on Excel. Unfortunately, Excel introduces version control issues and other data complexities that make budgeting and planning difficult. Relatively quickly, a company outgrows Excel and is ready to take that next step in its finance maturity. 

Perhaps you’ve raised money from highly interested investors and assembled a board of directors who not only require regular reporting packages, but an updated view of your future outlook. This puts tremendous pressure on your finance team as they cope with time non-automated complex data exercises.

Regardless of your reason, analyzing  variances at a granular level begins with the ability to structure and orchestrate disparate financial data. This is the point where Excel and ERP systems begin to break down. You now have numerous data sources coming from non-integrated systems that aren’t updating in real time to inform accurate and comprehensive models and forecasts.

Trying to manipulate and decipher all of your financial data from multiple systems is an antiquated process that requires countless hours of tedious work, is prone to error and isn’t scalable. Conversely, relying on cookie-cutter templates doesn’t satisfy all of your finance operations needs and leaves you with gaps (no, not that GAAP) in your reporting. ‍

Leverage Integrations to Enhance Efficiency

Direct integrations are a convenient solution to transform your budgeting and planning process . Using a centralized platform, integrations can automatically pull data from multiple systems and organize and securely store it in the cloud. 

From there, finance teams can work within a single platform without toggling through endless spreadsheets, tabs or other system interfaces. Here’s a list of some of the primary benefits of leveraging direct integrations across your budgeting and planning function.

1. Operate From a Single Source of FP&A Truth

You might have heard the term ‘single source of truth’ before. For every data set in a company, there’s a system that is the most accurate depiction of that data. Employee-level details are maintained in a human resources information system (HRIS). Customer information in a customer relationship management (CRM) single source of truth.

The same holds true for budgeting and planning software used by financial planning and analysis (FP&A) professionals. Financial data from various systems (ERPs, HRIS, etc.) integrate into a single platform , which becomes the single source of truth for all of the financial data used by the FP&A team. An FP&A platform ensures all departments are operating from the same version or scoreboard. This streamlines version control and eliminates timing differences and other errors.

2. Maximize Your Finance Team’s Abilities

Finance teams are an essential part of your company’s success, though their efforts can sometimes be overlooked. Executives, investors, board members and other stakeholders are interested in the finished product — the reports, visualized in a manner that’s easy to understand and most importantly, accurate.

Simplifying the functionality of end-user technology will help you reach that goal. Working in a single platform for all reporting, budgeting and planning needs is an ideal scenario for finance professionals. Previously, finance teams had to juggle dozens of Excel sheets, sourced from multiple systems, requiring messy data imports and exports that lacked any structure.

Manually extracting data from various sources of truth required weeks of effort to convert the data into actionable information. The best FP&A platforms solve this issue. The technology centralizes all of the necessary data and uses a familiar Excel-like interface, so there’s no true learning curve after a speedy implementation.

Check out our free white paper to learn how you can accelerate the process of creating a mature and impactful finance function.

3. Facilitate Strategic Discussions and Strategy

Company objectives and strategies begin with conversations across decision-makers. It’s the responsibility of the FP&A team to provide decision-makers with the necessary reports, budgets and forecasts to drive strategic conversations. Your finance team’s ability to closely manage company performance is indicative of your company’s success. 

If your finance team has to scramble or spend weeks on manual tasks to develop these critical reports, it hinders their ability to effectively analyze the data. An integrated budgeting and planning platform streamlines the process and infuses all strategic conversations with detailed financial information . With the right solution, finance teams can better facilitate strategic decision-making, enable business drivers and growth.

4. Adopt a Detailed Annual Budget To Model Planning

Traditionally, budgets are created once a year and actual monthly results are compared with the budget for that month. The problem with that approach is that it makes for an awkward analysis of variances. Rarely does the phasing of expenses and revenue assumed in the budget play out that way as the year unfolds. 

You may have straight-lined travel expenses when you built the budget, but now you are in the midst of the year and plans are more concrete. If you continue to compare actual results to budget, most of your variances will simply be timing-related and not reflective of changes in decisions. To have meaningful variance analysis, it is critical that you have a regularly updated monthly forecast.

Embracing a continuous forecasting process provides clarity into evolving decisions keeps everyone on track without rushing to conclusions or reassessing strategies that haven't been fully carried out. Adopting an integrated budgeting and forecasting software allows you to continuously iterate on forecasts, leverage automation and develop other what-if scenarios to plan for the future.

5. Create a Collaborative  Environment 

Budgeting not only dictates the allocation of funds but also provides a framework for department leaders to strategize. For finance teams, it's inefficient to try and connect the dots or manually enter in updates in disjointed systems and spreadsheets. This antiquated process is also prone to user-error.

For example, the marketing executive knows exactly how much the Company has allocated to marketing. They can develop plans to optimize spend for the upcoming year accordingly. As the year progresses, marketing can alter spend based on a common view of the year-to-date results.

By using direct integrations with built-in automation to update details throughout the platform, you create a collaborative process amongst budget owners where your finance team can develop future budgets and forecast scenarios using the most up-to-date metrics.

6. Provide Visibility Across Critical Data and Reports

Executives, board members and investors crave visibility into the company’s high-level metrics and the company’s financial results. While the finance team obsesses over the details, key stakeholders need a view of results, and forecasts that are relevant to them on a monthly basis.

By integrating accounting, budgeting and planning tools into a single platform, your data remains connected and up-to-date with minimal effort, and your executives, board members and investors remain on the same page. 

A centralized platform makes creating and sharing reports much easier for finance teams. The time spent between monthly close and reporting is eliminated. This saves your finance team days of data extraction and compilation. Your team can create and share reports immediately knowing the data is up-to-date. 

Leveraging FutureView System’s FP&A Platform

If you’re looking to transform your reporting, budgeting and planning process, FutureView Systems is for you. Our platform is equipped with direct integrations into your EPR and other systems to automate manual tasks and stage your data for analysis. Once staged, you’ll be able to easily create various reports and what-if scenarios to measure  the impact your business  initiatives will have on your budgets and forecasts.

Using Netsuite, Quickbooks or Intacct? Our detailed, yet quick implementation process takes weeks, not months and requires little internal effort. To see what you can achieve with FutureView, schedule a demo with one of our finance experts today!

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What Is Integrated Business Planning (IBP)?

The term today is highly debated between two groups of practitioners: one defines it as the planning process that includes demand review, supply review, product management review, management business review, financial reconciliation, and business strategy. Some view IBP as a broader version of S&OP, which also emphasizes the role of strategic planning. It continues to evolve.

benefits of integrated business planning forecasting and process management

More From Forbes

Why strategic workforce planning is more valuable than ever.

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Operational headcount planning isn’t holding up in an age of digital transformation and AI ... [+] integration.

The leaves haven’t turned quite yet, and your coffee may not taste like pumpkin spice, but one autumn ritual is looming on the horizon: budget season. Yet, as leaders gear up for the spreadsheets and financial forecasts of fall with late-summer strategic planning, there’s a chance they’ve already overlooked one of their most valuable assets—their people.

Unfortunately, few companies go beyond traditional operational workforce planning. They forecast the headcount budget for the next year to inform hiring and location planning.

That won’t cut it in today’s business environment. The rapid pace of digital and AI has many companies scrambling to form a vision of the future, but they need to ensure their people are ready, too. And while many are talking about upskilling , strategic workforce planning is also becoming increasingly necessary.

Good strategic workforce planning is different from operational planning because it looks much further ahead to determine what kind of workforce is needed to deliver the company’s long-term strategy. It’s characterized by four principles.

It is future-back, not today-forward.

The gravitational pull of today is strong. By not looking far enough out, leaders may rely too much on thinking that’s grounded in existing efforts and plans. Even looking three years out is insufficient to force leaders out of an incremental mindset.

Instead, the best leaders take a future-back approach—they envision the distant future and then build a plan to achieve it. They understand that good strategic workforce planning often enters an uncomfortable space where some aspects of the “how” are unknown.

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Successful strategic workforce planning is not one-size-fits-all. It often involves focusing differentially on a few job families—groupings of roles with reasonable skill overlaps. The best plans focus exclusively on large or scarce workforce populations that expect to see change.

It is learning-based.

No one can predict the future. By definition, a strategic workforce plan will be wrong. However, leaders can guard against incorrect assumptions by making the plan easily adaptable and updating it each year based on what they’ve learned. They will watch carefully for the right signposts and distinguish between offsetting forces. For instance, leaders might make assumptions around increasing headcount due to business growth and decreasing headcount from automation productivity gains.

It is simple enough to be repeatable.

A common pitfall in strategic workforce planning is overcomplicating the process. When leaders make the workforce plan too granular, it becomes a bureaucratic, wasted effort that the business resents. The best processes are tied to annual strategic planning. They feel like a light addition to thinking through the strategy’s people implications.

USAA recently reimagined its strategic workforce planning process around these four principles. As a mission-led financial services company run by members for members to serve the military and its families, USAA sees its employees as a critical asset.

“With evolving business needs and increased AI and technology adoption, USAA needed to adapt its strategic workforce planning approach,” says Tami Cabaniss, chief human resources officer at USAA. “We now have richer dialogues about how to build the future workforce we need and can better plan and upskill our people.”

As demonstrated at USAA, good strategic planning thoughtfully assesses both human and financial capital. HR teams can help the business define the future at the job family level in the same way that finance supports forecasting major P&L and capital lines. Ultimately, the business must decide how provocative it wants the numbers to be, but HR can help shape the discussion.

When done well, strategic workforce planning can ensure organizations are prepared to meet their long-term strategic goals. It can be a valuable and natural extension of the business strategy that yields a major competitive advantage, positioning a firm for sustained growth and innovation, no matter the changes to come.

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