2.

6 Model Data and Planning Area

A planning model in IBP provides the following capabilities to support different
business processes:
1. Highly fexible confguration
2. Pre-confgured standard leading practices content
3. Calculations and algorithms
A planning model in an Integrated Business Planning covers planning processes
with different periodicities, planning levels at which plans are run, and different
levels at which data is stored.
An IBP solution typically addresses process and data integration across various
systems or applications. These processes can have different granularities of the
planning hierarchies and time periods. Furthermore, the processes can have different
frequency of execution. The above example shows a planning process with short-,
mid-, and long-term planning, with the focus varying from days to weeks, weeks to
months, and months to years. There can be several different user roles accessing
different aspects of an integrated process where demand planners focus on volume at

level of product/customer, whereas fnance would have a view on value

from detail to aggregated business units/category levels.
In SAP IBP, a unifed planning model covers business process and data, across
different application modules like demand, S&OP, control tower, inventory, supply,
and response. The integrated planning process is a harmonized execution of multiple
processes with the characteristics as listed in Fig. 2.56.
Integrated Business Processes do connect different subprocesses covering strategic,
tactical, and operational planning in one coherent, transparent, and manageable
process. These three process dimensions could be understood as:
• Strategic view on long-term planning:
• Strategic sales and operation planning
• Long-range business planning
• Network design and policy setting
• Tactical view on midterm to long-term planning:
• Monthly sales and operation planning
• Demand planning and demand management
• Inventory optimization
• Supply planning, allocations planning
• Operational view on short- to midterm planning:
• Demand sensing
• Demand shaping
• Order confrmations and supply priorities
The above integrated process can have a huge time horizon span. It may start from
the operational planning which covers up to 8 weeks, through the tactical planning
which covers from 3 to 36 months, and fnally to the strategic planning which often
goes even beyond a 5 years horizon.