BLOGSUPPLY CHAIN PLANNINGSAP INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING
Carla Gomez Subils, Anne van Dam

How to improve your planning results by 5-10% more

 Yes, data is key. We know that by know. If you’re visiting this webpage, there is a high chance that you work in Supply Chain. Can we predict your number one challenge? Crafting proper planning scenarios and consequently results. Indeed, you need data for that. Consistent, reliable data. A large number of organizations are either unaware of data inconsistencies or lacks a proper overview. This leads not only to a waste of time, but also amplifies it with decision making based upon inconsistent data. The latter accounts for a shocking average of $ 15 million loss. Per year. (Garner Research).

Damaging effects of inaccurate planning

Linking your Sales- & Operations (S&OP) planning to your operational execution plan is key to maintaining a healthy and profitable business. However, it can be challenging too. Even a best-in-class planning system like SAP IBP (Integrated Business Planning) will provide bad results if fed inconsistent inputs from multiple sources. This often calls for workarounds such as manual checks and monitoring. The consequent inaccurate planning can further spiral into revenue loss, stockouts, idle capacity and forecasting errors.

Award winning solution: Perfect Planning Guard

Imagine what it would be like to have consistent data, no matter how many systems you use. Even more so, having instant insight into the quality of your master and transactional data. The Perfect Planning Guard (PPG) that we developed, does just that. It won the SAP IBP Innovation Award, so we’re confident when we say that it truly solves your business issue. Let’s take a closer look into this unique piece of planning software.

The Perfect Planning Guard supports the full lifecycle of your planning data, from creation and maintenance to smart monitoring and retirement. As a result you can be sure that you work with the optimal planning and performance in SAP IBP. Use case examples are the creation of a new customer or deleting a product out of your planning if not sold anymore. PPG also provides an overview if a combination exists only in the source. After detection, PPG proposes to create that combination in the other systems or to delete it if obsolete. The tool also monitors the consistency of the transactional data, not only between your source systems and IBP, but also between the Time-Series and Order Based Planning Area’s in IBP. This truly ensures a correct base for your planning and also planning results.

In this cockpit you could see the accuracy score of the transactional and master data between the used systems.

Smart Deletion of Planning Combinations

ROI of Perfect Planning Guard

The ROI of PPG is high. Our clients who are using PPG, as part of SAP IBP, describe the implementation as a ‘no brainer’. The investment is modest, both from a financial and time perspective. You can have the basic version up and running within 2-4 weeks. All the manual work and related errors belong to the past and planners can now dedicate their precious time to what truly matters, in the supply chain.

‘’We use the PPG tool on a weekly base for consistency checks on production sourcing. In case of a detected issue we also use it ad hoc to analyze master data. The tool is extremely user friendly, saving us significant time on maintenance and control. This allows colleagues from Supply Planning to add real value by focusing on IBP heuristics result analysis.’’ 

Supply Planner – Rémy Cointreau

Keen to avoid expensive decisions based on inaccurate data?

Then consistent master data should be one of your top priorities. Are you still unsure where to begin or how pressing the matter is for your organization? Feel free to reach out to our supply chain planning experts. They are happy to discuss your case and demonstrate how PPG could help you make better decisions and increase your profit.