SAP Integrated Business Planning 

Planning is paramount, especially when it comes to its impact on supply chain efficiency and effectiveness of an organization. Especially our energy, resources and industrial customers are showing increasing interest in IBP (Integrated Business Planning), the process for balancing a firm’s commercial demands with its ability to supply in the most profitable way. Integrated Business Planning enables senior management to make informed business-changing decisions after considering relevant trade-offs, enabling companies to unlock potential supply chain value e.g. through improved working capital, revenue, on-time delivery and forecast accuracy.

In terms of IBP technology, our customers are challenged with mastering multivendor, multi-delivery and multi-enterprise customisations and integration of such complex SCM application environment.

We see a significant shift from owning and maintaining SCM business application software to consuming and using business application services via cloud-based subscriptions.

             - Juha Uski, Deloitte

The cloud-based SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) solution can improve your ability to anticipate supply chain bottlenecks, identify potential alternatives, and help you respond effectively and efficiently.

There are multiple paths you can take with SAP IBP to help maximize value from your supply chain investments. For some organizations, implementation speed is critical – requiring an accelerated path to results. Other organizations might require a more classic approach to IBP, covering requirements gathering and delivery of a tailored solution that operates within the capabilities of the standard SAP IBP platform. Some might require a highly customized IBP solution that can address evolving demands, strategic objectives, and unique requirements across the enterprise.

Whether you are looking for an expedited approach to achieve value with IBP or want to execute a large-scale transformation leveraging a broad custom solution, Deloitte can help. We offer three SAP IBP paths to help your organization arrive at a solution that can satisfy your needs:

1) Accelerated Implementation  – Instead of spending months scoping, planning, designing, building, testing and implementing a custom IBP solution, we can start with a preconfigured fast-track implementation, using a baseline approach developed and refined through previous implementations. You can essentially start realizing value at “go” – recognizing that the system can continue to evolve as processes mature. It’s an approach that can accelerate your ROI tremendously by generating impactful results in as little as 10-12 weeks.

2) Agile – For organizations that require a more tailored approach to IBP transformation, our Agile offering provides a practical but efficient solution—one aligned more with your specific needs. The rapid agile approach covers basic steps such as requirements-gathering followed by solution design to help deliver a solution that fits more closely with your business, addressing needs through standard functionalities offered by the SAP IBP platform.

3) Co-Innovation – For some organizations, needs can be very specific and may require more than tailoring the standard solution. Often, ambitious goals require bold moves and when encountered with difficult business challenges, it requires a deeper problem solving. Working with SAP, Deloitte has helped our clients undertake highly effective co-innovation projects. We have collaborated to design new features that address specific business requirements – in the process, gathering insights that can help shape future IBP solutions.* It’s a custom approach that can help extensively address unique needs while strategically positioning the organization to meet future goals.

Smarter answers to better supply chain questions

Our customers repeatedly bring up the need to break down silos between the different functions contributing to an executable operating plan linked with financial plans: sales, marketing, demand and supply planning, production, logistics and finance. Also the transparency of future demand and supply capacity, as well as easy generation of simulation scenarios for balancing trade-offs are hot topics.

            – Jarno Salmela, Deloitte

With IBP solution in place, leaders can examine, understand, and answer questions that may have gone unanswered, or were too difficult to address. Here are a few examples.

• How is market demand likely to evolve in the coming months?
• Is there enough production capacity in certain regions to support expected market growth?
• What is the likely impact of upcoming promotional campaigns on our distribution network?
• Is the storage capacity of our main distribution center sufficient to meet the demands of likely annual growth for a newly introduced product family
• Given logistics costs, demand footprint, and raw material price differences across regions, what is the appropriate product mix and production capacity utilization across regions?