Case Studies

Integrated Business Planning Optimization

2 minute read

The Client

Fortune 500 food manufacturing company

The Challenge

The company was struggling with the Supply & Demand portion of their Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process.

The company had begun their IBP journey several years prior, but faced numerous challenges driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, frequent team reorganizations, varying skill sets, and differences in operational knowledge and systems. As a result, the IBP meetings lacked the cohesive content and effective reporting tools required to identify high-level exceptions, risks, and opportunities, which are critical in demonstrating the ability to meet demand requirements.

Leadership needed help assessing and offering solutions for the inefficiencies in IBP meetings and content, focusing on identifying challenges that were hindering progress. This required a unique skillset and the ability to work seamlessly across numerous departments, including planning, operations, finance, business development, commercial, category management, and IT.

The Solution

Catena deployed a Supply Chain Change Management Consultant to evaluate the company’s IBP process and provide a solution that would work for the highly matrixed organization.

Steps taken to fix the IBP process included:

  • Identifying what was broken in the process. This included approaching the problem as an unbiased party and interviewing internal stakeholders—from analysts to senior executive leadership—to uncover inefficiencies and gather key insights, thus defining the needs of all key stakeholders before designing a solution.
  • Benchmarking what the IBP process should look like. This included evaluating the company’s existing IBP process against best-in-class processes and recommending specific steps, reporting tools, and change management techniques to enhance the process and gain employee adoption.
  • Optimizing meeting content and frequency. Recognizing the excessive number of unproductive meetings during the IBP cycle, we helped consolidate and streamline the number of meetings. Through collaboration sessions with finance, planning, and commercial teams, our consultant standardized content and presentation materials for the analysts and supply chain leads to present during IBP meetings.
  • Building supply chain models and standardizing presentations. We developed standardized presentations to ensure coherent formats, easy comprehension, and faster decision making from senior leaders. Additionally, given the diversity in the tools and systems used by each analyst, several reporting models were built in Excel and Power BI to support the standardized presentations. 

The Benefit

Our solution played a pivotal role in revamping the company’s IBP process by quickly addressing the challenges with streamlined solutions, enabling the company to link high-level decisions to lower-level execution.

  • Collaborating across the company to identify issues and resolutions underscored the commitment to a comprehensive and holistic approach to problem solving, driving a positive change throughout the organization.
  • With standardized presentations and content, the Planning team could convey complex information succinctly, ensuring essential insights and data were translated effectively to decision makers.
  • Enhanced reporting tools provided data and dashboards for the standardized IBP presentations.
  • Both the reduction in meetings and enhanced standardized content maximized efficiency, providing several hours back to key stakeholders each month. 
  • The implemented solution will provide the organization with the ability to evolve and adapt over time. By addressing challenges in the IBP process, streamlining meetings, and standardizing content and reporting tools, the company has established a solid foundation for continuous improvement.

Facing any similar challenges? Contact us to discuss how Catena Solutions can help.

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