Orchestrate your planning with Sales & Operations Planning software

The Infor Sup­ply Chain Plan­ning soft­ware suite accel­er­ates and orches­trates plan­ning through­out the sup­ply chain. Its IBP — Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning — mod­ule sim­pli­fies the indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial plan­ning process ,

Infor IBP is a com­plete mod­ule offer­ing mul­ti­ple analy­sis, visu­al­iza­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion capabilities. 

This S&OP soft­ware sup­ports the com­pa­ny’s entire strate­gic process, help­ing par­tic­i­pants to make the right deci­sions.

The IBP mod­ule sup­ports com­pa­nies in all sec­tors, bring­ing them clos­er to per­fect sup­ply chain orchestration. 

In addi­tion, Infor IBP enables com­pa­nies to main­tain con­trol over the costs and ser­vices pro­vid­ed to their cus­tomers:

• link the exe­cu­tion of oper­a­tions to the com­pa­ny’s strate­gic objectives
• respond to com­pa­ny chal­lenges and devel­op­ments by syn­chro­niz­ing objec­tives and players
• facil­i­tate reac­tiv­i­ty with a glob­al process for mon­i­tor­ing the sup­ply chain, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the face of fluc­tu­a­tions and risks

IBP features: industrial and commercial planning software

The IBP mod­ule — indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial plan­ning soft­ware — enables …

Long-term planning of demand and supply according to market trends

The S&OP process is ful­ly man­aged in IBP. 

The solu­tion aligns the plan­ning of the com­pa­ny’s var­i­ous depart­ments with their respec­tive objec­tives, as well as with the com­pa­ny’ s over­all objec­tives, and thus : 

• has a direct and pos­i­tive impact on the bal­ance of sup­ply and demand,
• par­tic­i­pates in improv­ing com­pa­ny processes,
• increas­es col­lab­o­ra­tion between players.

What are the con­se­quences of IBP’s bal­anced long-term vision?

A high-per­for­mance plan­ning tool for :

• reduce sup­ply variability,
• absorb fluc­tu­a­tions in demand more easily.

Replace spreadsheets for more reliable data

S&OP process­es man­aged in MS-Excel are time-con­sum­ing, and lack trans­paren­cy and data reli­a­bil­i­ty. And that’s not count­ing mis­han­dling, which can lead to dam­ag­ing alterations. 

Accord­ing to the Gart­ner info­graph­ic below, MS-Excel is syn­ony­mous with an imma­ture S&OP process:

• lit­tle trans­paren­cy and no collaboration.

If you’re still using spread­sheets for S&OP plan­ning, analy­sis and report­ing, you’re at stage 1 of the matu­ri­ty mod­el:

The IBP tool, on the oth­er hand, allows you to oper­ate in a net­work:

• changes made in the sys­tem are imme­di­ate­ly vis­i­ble,
• all users can main­tain data in this glob­al man­age­ment system,
• plan­ning is opti­mized by rolling fore­casts based on the most recent data,
• the IBP tool ensures max­i­mum effi­cien­cy and guar­an­tees the exe­cu­tion of S&OP processes.

Support your growth initiatives with IBP 

Every com­pa­ny encoun­ters and cre­ates busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties to be seized. Often, how­ev­er, deci­sions can’t be tak­en calm­ly due to a lack of con­crete means to assess whether launch­ing a new busi­ness would affect exist­ing business. 

With IBP Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning, cor­po­rate deci­sion-mak­ers now have a reli­able tool for mak­ing the right deci­sions at the right time:

• mon­i­tor­ing fluc­tu­a­tions in demand, 
• sim­u­la­tion and abil­i­ty to launch new products, 
• adapt­ing the Sup­ply Chain to a com­plex and chang­ing environment, 
• all the while ensur­ing the com­pa­ny’s finan­cial per­for­mance. 

An inte­grat­ed, col­lab­o­ra­tive sup­ply chain with end-to-end oper­a­tional vis­i­bil­i­ty enhances your orga­ni­za­tion’s abil­i­ty to serve its cus­tomers and achieve key benefits.

Generate predictive financial analyses, reconciliations andsynchronize your operations

Let’s take 2 ser­vices with 2 antag­o­nis­tic objec­tives:

• sales plans to opti­mize revenues, 
• while oper­a­tions are designed to opti­mize costs.

With their dif­fer­ent assump­tions and objec­tives, these 2 ser­vices are at odds with each oth­er. They unin­ten­tion­al­ly lead to a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the com­pa­ny’s over­all per­for­mance objectives.

How do you rec­on­cile the KPIs of dif­fer­ent depart­ments that clash and con­tra­dict each other? 

With Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning — IBP, crit­i­cal data is exposed and syn­chro­nized. The tool’s com­mon finan­cial lan­guage facil­i­tates man­age­ment and planning.

Thanks to IBP, you ben­e­fit from con­sis­tent, shared and clear­ly pre­sent­ed data. 

The S&OP process, and the rig­or pro­vid­ed by IBP, ensures the reg­u­lar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy of busi­ness and sup­ply chain planning.

Control your supply chain with “what if” scenario simulations

“Unre­al­is­tic plan­ning is as bad as no plan­ning at all”.

Intri­cate glob­al val­ue chains mean longer lead times. Fluc­tu­at­ing demand and trans­port con­di­tions make long-term plan­ning extreme­ly com­plex for companies.

With IBP, mul­ti­ple “what if” sim­u­la­tions allow :

• project and man­age the impact of objec­tives spe­cif­ic to each department 
• and this for all the enti­ties of an orga­ni­za­tion geolo­cat­ed through­out the world.

Gone, too, are the“silo” opti­miza­tions that dom­i­nate cor­po­rate planning. 

Data and derived objec­tives are aligned to enable response plan­ning and oper­a­tional deci­sions. 

Like­wise, tac­ti­cal and strate­gic plan­ning and deci­sion-mak­ing are per­fect­ly aligned with oper­a­tions.

IBP is a strate­gic, finan­cial and cross-func­tion­al tool, designed to be under­stood and fed by all par­tic­i­pants in your com­pa­ny’s S&OP process.

PIC software implementation: an essential step

On aver­age, ALOER teams and cus­tomer teams spend less than 4 months set­ting up the IBP soft­ware. 

We strong­ly rec­om­mend change man­age­ment sup­port for all depart­ments and, more broad­ly, for all those involved in the IBP project and the com­pa­ny’s S&OP .

A word from the integrator about IBP

Process alignment

S&OP soft­ware brings togeth­er all the best prac­tices. 

Eas­i­ly con­fig­urable, it can be adapt­ed to each orga­ni­za­tion’s S&OP process. 

The soft­ware takes care of all the key steps such as :

• demand planning, 
• sup­ply planning, 
• finan­cial reconciliation 
• and exec­u­tive review.

The soft­ware adapts effi­cient­ly to the spe­cif­ic work­flows and deci­sion-mak­ing require­ments of each organization.

Scenario planning and what-if analysis 

IBP’s strength lies in its abil­i­ty to per­form sce­nario plan­ning and sim­u­la­tion analy­ses that would not be pos­si­ble with ERP… with­out alter­ing any data. 

Infor IBP sup­ports the cre­ation and eval­u­a­tion of alter­na­tive plan­ning sce­nar­ios. 

For users, it’s final­ly reas­sur­ing to be able to sim­u­late the impact of changes:

• request,
• of sup­ply,
• or com­mer­cial variables.

Cen­tral­iz­ing all data saves real time in the S&OP process.

Reporting and performance measurement

For ALOER, IBP’s strength lies in its abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate numer­ous stan­dard reports, sim­pli­fy­ing analysis. 

Tai­lor-made reports are also easy to cre­ate. 

Cen­tral­ized data pro­vides vis­i­bil­i­ty on key met­rics, per­for­mance trends and excep­tion alerts to sup­port deci­sion-mak­ing based on the lat­est avail­able information.

10 benefits of Integrated Business Planning — Infor IBP

With IBP :

Ensure alignment between departments 

Shar­ing infor­ma­tion from sales, oper­a­tions, finance and sup­ply chain depart­ments in a sin­gle tool encour­ages col­lab­o­ra­tion and the align­ment of every­one’s objec­tives towards a com­mon goal.

Make informed decisions

Con­sol­i­dat­ing data from mul­ti­ple sys­tems and depart­ments is invalu­able for decision-makers. 

IBP pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive, long-term view of the orga­ni­za­tion, its per­for­mance and finances. 

This view enables you to make deci­sions based on the most com­pre­hen­sive infor­ma­tion avail­able, and to bet­ter man­age risks.

Improve your forecasts 

Using data from fore­cast­ing soft­ware such as Demand Plan­ning, IBP enables you to project rev­enues and resource sched­ules . 

Optimize your resource allocation 

IBP pro­vides greater vis­i­bil­i­ty of avail­able resources, capac­i­ty uti­liza­tion and sales fore­casts. 

This helps to allo­cate cor­rect­ly, avoid bot­tle­necks, opti­mize over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and reduce costs.

Synchronize your workflows and processes 

Elim­i­nat­ing the need for man­u­al data entry to feed the S&OP process with IBP ensures : 

• a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion in errors,
• improv­ing and stan­dard­iz­ing process operation,
• auto­mate work­flows and reduce the time allo­cat­ed to the S&OP process. 

Project your financial performance

IBP’s numer­ous dash­boards make it easy to visu­al­ize and share per­for­mance data . 

The pre­sen­ta­tion of past, cur­rent and pro­ject­ed rev­enues, costs and prof­itabil­i­ty to deci­sion-mak­ers is harmonized.

Access dashboards and data in real time 

IBP is a sce­nario visu­al­iza­tion and sim­u­la­tion tool. 

It facil­i­tates :

• the study of sev­er­al situations,
• Mea­sur­ing progress against ini­tial targets. 

Facilitate collaboration and communication 

By cen­tral­iz­ing data, the S&OP process becomes trans­par­ent. 

The data used comes from the sys­tems of the var­i­ous depart­ments involved in the S&OP process. 

“Gone are the dis­cus­sions about the valid­i­ty of the data, in favor of a real focus on the pro­posed sce­nar­ios and their con­cretiza­tion.”

Scalable software that can be adapted to any situation

IBP, like all the oth­er mod­ules in the Infor Sup­ply Chain Plan­ning suite, adapts to increas­ing data vol­umes and orga­ni­za­tion­al changes.

Create a competitive advantage with IBP

The month­ly S&OP process is a vec­tor of con­sid­er­able com­pet­i­tive advan­tage for the company. 

IBP adds anoth­er lev­el of matu­ri­ty to S&OP, notably finance, by inte­grat­ing the notions of cost, rev­enue and mar­gin fore­casts into the process . 

With these best indus­tri­al prac­tices, we observe : 

• orga­ni­za­tions that are more agile and respon­sive to mar­ket changes,
• the rel­e­vance of decisions/guidelines facil­i­tat­ed by greater finan­cial inte­gra­tion,
• inte­grat­ing strate­gic ini­tia­tives into long-term plans,
• broad­er sim­u­la­tion capa­bil­i­ties, espe­cial­ly bud­getary,
• easy tran­si­tion from aggre­gate to detailed lev­el,
• greater con­fi­dence on the part of man­age­ment teams, facil­i­tat­ing decision-making.

Discover Infor’s benefits in figures 

Infor esti­mates the ben­e­fits:

• to 30 days: the reduc­tion of phys­i­cal inven­to­ry hold­ing time, 
• a 5% reduc­tion in ship­ping costs thanks to bet­ter upstream vis­i­bil­i­ty and planning.