Integrated Business Planning

For integrating functional plans, deploying business strategy, and driving business management

What is Integrated Business Planning (IBP)?

Led by your executive team, Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a common-sense process designed for effective decision-making. It allows senior management to plan and manage your entire organization over a 24-36 month horizon, aligning strategic and tactical plans each month, and allocating critical resources, people, equipment, inventory, materials, time, and money; to satisfy your customers in the most profitable way.

Integrated Business Planning represents the evolution of Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) from the supply and demand balancing process developed in the early 1980s. Today it is a process that drives the alignment of all functions across an organization, models and creates readiness for alternate outcomes, drives deployment of strategy, and enhances collaboration across supply chains.

Oliver Wight Integrated Business Planning

Integrated Business Model

What is the difference between S&OP and IBP?

There are many differences between Sales & Operations Planning and Integrated Business Planning, but firstly it’s important to note that IBP is not a supply chain process; it has a much broader reach. IBP is the process that connects your strategy and business plan to ensure both are delivered.

The purpose of IBP is not to drive a better forecast with which supply chain can plan. It is the process that brings focus to the deployment of your business strategy and provides a framework for effective decision-making to drive growth.

It's also much more than just a monthly meeting. IBP is a company framework to surface and solve problems and continually re-optimize plans as circumstances change. IBP enables businesses to create an aligned, cross-functional plan for the future, based upon key assumptions. These assumptions, documented and updated each month, are based on insights.

Read our white paper to learn more about what sets Integrated Business Planning apart from Sales & Operations Planning.

Looking for help with IBP software?

We often work with clients who have launched an IT implementation but have not taken their people on the change journey with them. Ensuring people, process, and tool alignment is pivotal to achieving your full business potential and avoiding people reverting back to old ways of working.

Our strategic alliances are leading experts in unlocking increased responsiveness through data-driven strategic designs using IBP software.

Working with our alliances we help clients to create an IBP roadmap – a clear view of how the process will be implemented including the role of people and tools. We also engage with executive teams to guide organizations in the design and implementation of required processes and behaviors to deliver business performance and strategic ambition.

How mature is your organization's true level of maturity in IBP?

Before embarking on any performance improvement program, it is imperative to identify your organization's true level of maturity. The Oliver Wight Maturity Model characterizes an organization as being in one of four key phases of maturity: Co-ordination, Business Process Control, Automation, or Integration. Assess your business maturity in Integrated Business Planning using our free online self-assessment tool.

Assess Your Business Maturity

How you can benefit from Integrated Business Planning

Early identification of gaps in the business plan and strategy deployment, creating time to close them

An integrated view of performance and projection of your business over a 24-36 month horizon

Alignment of functional operating plans and financial projections with ‘one set of numbers’

Application of scenario planning and modelling to areas of your business where there may be uncertainty or impact

Increased responsiveness to uncertainties and unplanned events to minimize negative impacts and seize opportunities

Creation of transparency and clear accountability across the business/organization

Simplification of the budgeting or annual planning process

Integration of strategy deployment with operational plans

Increased employee engagement and efficiency

Growth in revenue

Reduced costs

Improved customer service

Reduced inventory

Visibility of planned product changes, future demand from sales and marketing, supply chain performance, planned supply chain capability and flexibility, plus bottom-up plans and the actions and decisions required to deliver ‘best for business' outcomes

You should consider Integrated Business Planning for your business if:

You are constantly in ‘fire-fighting’ mode
You have a misaligned management team
You are continually missing the financial plan
You are experiencing rapid growth and can no longer manage effectively using an informal process
Your budgeting process is ‘painful’
You are struggling to get on top of service issues
You cannot keep up with growth in demand
You have excessive inventory
You are experiencing excessive rework and cost
Departments or sites are working in silos
There is no ‘single source of truth’ or ‘single set of numbers’ to run the business
You feel like you never have time to look at the strategy
There is poor deployment and execution of the strategic plan
You have poor employee engagement
You feel like you are not getting a return on the effort put into your existing S&OP/IBP process

How we can help

A diagnostic assessment of your current S&OP or IBP process, including its effectiveness and identifying any performance issues

Transfer of our knowledge to your people so they can create and manage an effective Integrated Business Planning process

Change management – plan, monitor, and support the implementation of change and its impact on your people

Facilitate the design of an IBP process to best fit your organization and its needs

Scoping of an action plan to address issues and take advantage of the opportunities identified, including resourcing, timelines, and performance improvement expectations

Coach IBP process users as you introduce the new ways of working

Assess and validate that your IBP process has achieved a Class A level of effectiveness – firmly embedded as the ‘way you do things’ and delivering the benefits you wanted