Part-1: SAP IBP Functional Journey

By: Krypt Admin - December 9th, 2020

Authored by: Shreya Ullas

In this Part-1 of the two-part blog series, we will walk you through the SAP IBP journey, more about it and its functional features.

SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP)

“Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing” (SAP), is an enterprise software developed by a German multinational software corporation going by the same name. It helps manage business operations and customer relations. Let us understand the brief timeline of SAP’s journey from ERP systems to Cloud Applications.

SAP ERP (Enterprise R esource Planning ) introduced in 1972.

1972 (R/1, R/2, R/3 (1,2,3,4,4.3,4.7,5,6, EHP (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8), HANA) – S4HANA 2020

SAP SCM (Supply Chain Management) introduced in 2002.

2002 (SCM 4.1, 5.0, 7.0, (EHP 1,2,3,4) – S&OP/IBP 2020

SAP CRM (Customer Relationship Management) introduced in 2005.

2005 SAP CRM (5.0,6.0,7.0, C24) – Hybris 2020

SAP SRM (Supplier relationship management) introduced in 2005.

2005 SAP SRM (4,5,7 EHP 1,2,3 ,4) – Ariba 2020

What is SAP Integrated Business Planning?

SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a real-time, cloud-based supply chain application built on the S/4 HANA platform. It is designed to leverage real-time data, a user-friendly dashboard, and predictive analytic tools to optimize business planning cycles. IBP extents the principles of Sales and Operations throughout the supply chain across all the levels of planning to deliver one seamless integrated process.

IBP is essentially an outgrowth of S&OP that completely aligns customer, demand, supply and strategic portfolios across a value chain to drive the planning strategy of a company, its financial performance, and its operational and tactical plans.

The complexities of the supply chain, owing to the inherent process changes like global sourcing and distribution, necessitates synchronization of operational plans with financial & strategic business goals and understand the impact on the overall business.

Its addresses the How can we plan? -> What can we do? -> What should we do?

Functional Features

Sales and operations planning (S&OP): Achieve a collaborative cross-functional sales and operations plan that optimizes inventory, service levels, availability, and profitability to drive an aligned operational plan.
Demand Planning: Complete visibility and transparency with multi-level planning horizons. Advanced capabilities for demand sensing for real-time planning, accurate forecast using statistical forecasting with multiple machine learning based advanced choice of algorithms.
Response and Supply: Develop rough cut supply & capacity plans in time and order series buckets including operational supply planning with and without constraint-based planning.
Inventory optimization: Improve customer service levels and generate inventory targets to minimize holding cost, while keeping optimized buffering for predictable uncertainty.
Demand-Driven Replenishment: Supports all steps of demand driven material requirement planning (DDMRP) for pull replenishment of defined stock buffers and a stock projection for the whole planning horizon.
Control Tower: Provides complete end to end visibility of the network with advanced analytics and dashboard features to increase supply chain agility and reduce supply chain costs.

Do not miss to read the concluding Part-2 of this blog in the following week.

How can Krypt help?

Krypt is an SAP preferred partner and has assisted in the success of global businesses across industries & geographies. We have helped businesses through successful integration & implementation of SAP IBP, SAP GTS, SAP TM & SAP EWM.

If you are a global consumer products company looking for successful IBP deployment, and wish to explore more about our products/services, please request a DEMO or do contact us.