The Oliver Wight Class A Standard for Business Excellence, 7th Edition

4Integrated Business Planning

Purpose

To integrate all plans, deploy the business strategy and drive proactive business management. In response to external and internal insights and change, the process uses modeling of scenarios to optimize business plans and performance. The process is enabled by technology to become the driver of Enterprise Integrated Business Planning (EIBP).

Positioning

Process maturity improves over time through education, committed leadership, expert guidance, and a focused effort to attain key business milestones.

After embarking on the path to improvement, accountabilities are assigned, the process elements, supporting measures and cadence of the process are implemented. Together, with structured continuous improvement, they drive process transformation.

Done well, a Class A Milestone is achieved at the top of Phase 1 of Business Maturity (see Foundation, Figure I.1). At this stage, the Leadership Team uses the process as the way to run the business. Integrated Business Planning (IBP) becomes the business decision-making process, enabled by risk analysis and what-if scenario planning. It continuously realigns plans for product, demand, supply, and financial projections to support the business strategy. The Annual Business Plan is directly derived from the IBP process, the bottom-up plans are continuously reconciled to the Annual Plan, and Strategic Plan and gaps are managed. The Leadership Team hold themselves accountable and allocate critical resources ...