INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING
Why integrated business planning?
Create a balanced and agile plan for your business
Make smarter decisions with powerful analytics and align sales, finance, procurement, and operations through a shared sales and operations plan.
Use scenario planning to compare different demand-supply scenarios, helping you make better decisions by seeing their impact on both financial outcomes and operational efficiency.
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Core capabilities to drive smart integrated planning
Demand planning
A world-class forecasting engine enhanced with machine learning capabilities to assess the impact of promotions and events on expected demand while factoring in underlying (or baseline) run rates, trends, and seasonality. Pivot Forecasting® is a unique technology that enables flexible forecasting at any level with mixed product, channel, customer, and geographic hierarchies.
Supply planning
Optimize stocking levels and efficiently replenish inventories while improving customer service and cost. Netstock Predictor IBP plans inventories through multi-tiered distribution channels with multilevel formulations or bills of material and complies with ordering constraints such as MOQs, vehicle loading, lot sizes, and lot expiration dates.
Sales & operations planning
Share financial and performance goals and strategies in a single place, putting supply chain, sales, procurement, operations, and finance on the same page. Integrated sales & operations planning provides centralized visibility and purpose-built functionality to synchronize sales forecasts with inventory, procurement, operations, and finance teams. For example, the sales and finance teams can work in currencies, while operations and logistics work with quantities and units of measure that are most useful for their processes.
Capacity planning
Netstock offers both rough cut and finite capacity planning. Produce time-phased production plans and solve for optimal material-resource-time assignments. The optional Finite Capacity Planning will suggest strategic inventory builds and alternative production resources, preparing your business for seasonal peaks, known constraints such as the Lunar New Year, dynamically changing supply chains, or rapid growth.
Trusted by thousands of businesses globally
What customers have to say
The planning systems changes we made with Netstock and integrating with Oracle have enabled the business to be super flexible during these turbulent times. I can’t imagine the pandemic hitting us before when all planning was offline & disconnected. We’ve been able to completely replan our entire supply chain so quickly, and our incoming supply chain and inventories were well-positioned going into it, helping us stay strong!
Director, Global Materials & Inventory, Starkey Hearing Technologies
After a little over a year, we reduced inventories in the boxed cards product line by 65 percent, down from an average of about 2 million units to 700,000. We also maintained in-stock service levels of over 98 percent, which is important because of the demanding characteristics of many of our channels.
Senior Planner, DaySpring
Over the course of one year, we reduced lead times on key products by over 50%, improved forecast accuracy, reduced inventory by 16%, and kept customer on-time delivery at previously high levels.
Supply Chain Director, Steris Corporation
It only took about a month to switch from our ERP’s S&OP system to Cloud Smoothie, and our planning immediately became more agile. For example, it helped us identify and quantify the growing importance of Amazon’s marketplace, and we were able to make improvements in how we planned for that channel in about a week. Previously, these types of changes would have required IT prioritization and took much longer to implement. Now, we can add new key customers or channels in no time flat, and without diluting our IT resources.
Senior Supply Chain Manager, Shimano
FAQs about Integrated Business Planning
Integrated Business Planning (IBP) is a strategic management process that aligns business operations with financial goals by connecting various organizational departments. It integrates functions such as Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, and Operations to create a unified view of the company’s performance and future direction. IBP is a collaborative and data-driven method that ensures all departments work together seamlessly to achieve common goals. It provides a robust baseline for agile decision-making and keeps all teams focused on specific KPIs.
IBP is essential for businesses with operational complexity, as it maximizes overall business performance and profitability. By aligning demand, supply, budget, and business targets towards a common goal, IBP enables companies to make data-driven decisions and respond effectively to market changes, customer demands, and supply chain variations.
The benefits of Integrated Business Planning are numerous. Some of the key advantages include:
- Enhanced decision-making: IBP provides a unified view of the company’s performance and future direction, enabling informed decision-making.
- Improved operational efficiency: By aligning demand, supply, and budget, IBP optimizes operational efficiency and reduces waste.
- Increased profitability: IBP maximizes overall business performance and profitability by aligning business targets towards a common goal.
- Better supply chain management: IBP enables companies to respond effectively to supply chain variations and customer demands.
- Improved collaboration: IBP fosters collaboration and communication across various business functions, ensuring that all teams work together seamlessly to achieve common goals.
Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) is a process that balances supply and demand and optimizes operational efficiency. However, IBP takes a more comprehensive approach by integrating strategic, financial, and operational planning. While S&OP focuses on supply chain planning, IBP aligns business operations with financial goals and provides a holistic business view.
IBP provides a trusted, common view of the numbers, which is essential for agile decision-making. It keeps all teams collectively trying to achieve the same corporate objectives while staying focused on specific KPIs. In contrast, S&OP is primarily focused on supply chain planning and may not provide the same level of integration and alignment as IBP.
Predictive analytics and machine learning play a crucial role in Integrated Business Planning. By leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics, IBP solutions can:
- Predict demand: Powerful algorithms can improve short- to long-term forecast accuracy, enabling companies to respond effectively to changing market conditions.
- Optimize supply chain planning: Predictive analytics can help companies optimize their supply chain planning, reducing waste and improving operational efficiency.
- Enhance decision-making: Algorithm-powered insights can inform decision-making, enabling companies to make data-driven decisions and respond effectively to market changes.
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