Part 3 of the blog series “Integrated Business Planning as core value driver in key industries”.
Co-authored by Alina Gross and Öykü Ilgar
Consumer products companies need to provide personal, relevant, and simple shopping experiences – which implies commerce is seamless, technology is invisible, and privacy, security, and trust is assured. More importantly, they have to ensure that their products are on top of consumers’ minds by anticipating and meeting demand to better serve customers needs and earn their trust.
Consumer products companies strive to gain enhanced business insights to be able to analyse sales planning data down to the individual brand level in order to optimize business results.
The
BSH Home Appliances Group, Europe’s largest manufacturer of home appliances ("Bosch", "Siemens"), operates 42 plants worldwide and has a sales, production, and service presence in 80 locations in about 50 countries. To drive digital transformation, it set out to reimagine its planning and supply chain functions. The objective: to optimize business results based on collaborative decision-making and a demand-driven operating model for manufacturing resource planning (MRP). To do this, BSH needed an integrated end-to-end planning system to support automated statistical forecasts and real-time simulations in one system.
_________________________
“SAP Integrated Business Planning helped us shape our future digital supply chain based on a state-of-the-art planning application. We’re closing in on our goal to become and stay the first choice for consumers worldwide.”
Dietmar Baumann, Head of the Supply Chain Factory (IT), BSH Home Appliances Group
_________________________
SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) optimizes planning results using forecast algorithms and predictive analytics in order to create standard, global templates for demand, sales and operations planning. After its implementation, BSH Home Appliances Group now handles exceptions through alerts which results in an increase in visibility over bottlenecks and stock evolution. With these benefits it became more agile with respect to changing customer demand and market conditions. Get a live impression from this year's
Sapphire where Dieter Baumann presented this case.
Further benefits SAP IBP customers report are better transparency of data sources, forecast accuracy improvement and faster simulation and scenario capabilities (
Stanley Black & Decker).
Prestige Brands especially benefits from the better business decisions it achieves due to simplified processes, reduced planning times, aggregated financial plans and supported mergers and acquisitions.
The ability to ‘slice and dice’ data real-time by different planning levels and the statistical forecast with inputs form key stakeholders for consensus demand planning has especially convinced
Yeti Coolers. Further benefits they have reported are the what/if analysis to analyse sourcing options, the ability to generate a suggested purchase plan which incorporates lead time and the ability to create an allocation plan.
Speed, agility and customer insights are also a hot topic for
Microsoft's consumer devices business:
_________________________
“A big component of what is driving Microsoft’s devices business is the ability to personalise products. To be nimble in this way where we can activate a very different supply chain in a matter of weeks, rather than months or years. Where we are looking for real opportunities with SAP IBP - understanding where ever our consumer is, whatever retail store they might shop in, where ever they might be purchasing, whether it is online: that we can fulfil their demand, at their request, and meeting their expectation. The sophistication and speed that we have built in leveraging SAP IBP, gives us the ability to understand the customer’s demand.”
Corey Hughes, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation
_________________________
To get even closer to their customers, some manufacturers decide to
produce and deliver their products directly to buyers and totally cut out the middlemen and retailers. This can reduce total supply chain
costs, which can then be passed on to the consumer. In his great blog,
Richard Howells describes how this model works and that the "
direct-to-consumer experience still relies on a great product experience".
The SAP Integrated Business Planning solution allows end to end visibility and eliminates uncertainty across the extended supply chain – so when will you start to master the uncertainty in your supply chain?
Also read the other parts of my blog series:
Part 1 “
Agri-Business and Life Sciences Industries: Reaping What You Sow with Data
Part 2 “How Integrated Business Planning can Help Mill Companies Adopt a Circular Economy That Benefits Itself, the Planet, and the Economy”Analytics”
Quotes & Customer Cases
Learn More
Getting Started:
www.sap.com/scm What is SAP Integrated Business Planning?
Explore Further on the
Buying SAP IBP Frequently Asked Questions
Get More Details on
SAP IBP Applications with the IBP Online Documentation