Integrated Business Planning

This book presents a comprehensive introduction to Integrated Business Planning (IBP), building on practitioner’s experience and showcasing the value gains when moving from disconnected planning to IBP. It also proposes a road map for the transformation of planning, including technological initiatives, business priorities and organizational processes, and demonstrates how to motivate different IBP stakeholders to work together, when and how to connect strategic, tactical and operational planning and how to leverage functional and data integration features of SAP IBP. Real-world business-process use cases help to show the practical implications of implementing SAP IBP. Furthermore the book explores new capabilities, including chapters on talent acquisition and retention, and career development leadership in an IBP Center of Expertise. A discussion of how disruptive technology trends like big data, Internet of Things, machine learning and artificial intelligence can influence IBP now and in the near future rounds out the book.

Robert Kepczynski has more than 20 years’ experience in supply chain management and technology. Robert does assess, design and implement people capability models, process design and delivers efficient technology solutions. He is specialized in supply chain planning processes and technologies. Robert took business roles in plant supply / production planning and sequencing, inventory and materials management, warehouse and duty operations, costing and budgeting, in market IBP and S&OP, distribution planning, and in regional & global S&OP, forecasting, demand planning and demand management, and process ownership. Robert led x-functional transformation programs delivering functional optimization and differentiation. His production plant, market and global process experiences was valued in the 2nd worldwide SAP IBP implementation, which has started in 2013. This project proved that Robert has heart, head and hand for IBP.

Raghav Jandhyala is a Senior Director of Product Management at SAP for SAP IBP responsible for sales and operations planning and unified planning processes and best practices in IBP. Raghav has over 16 years of experience in different fields like Supply Chain Management, Retail and Banking along with strong technical background in development and adoption of business applications. Raghav held various roles in his career as business consultant, development architect, solutions manager and product manager. Raghav is responsible for developing the roadmap for S&OP solution and works with multiple IBP Customers for new innovations and as a trusted advisor for their global rollouts.

Ganesh Sankaran is a Supply Chain Management technology practitioner. Ganesh helps clients solve business problems and generate value from their supply chain processes, particularly in the planning domain. Ganesh possesses a skillset that combines deep theoretical insights in SCM and rich implementation experience in SAP solutions further enriched by around seven years of prior software development experience.

Alecsandra Dimofte is working for SAP where she started as a supply chain management consultant. Alecsandra was involved in several IBP / S&OP implementation projects which allowed her to play different roles, from integration consultant to functional design lead. Alecsandra contributed to the development of the S&OP practice within her delivery unit and to the growth of the IBP online community by active participation in the space dedicated to IBP.