# Management Business Review

The Management Business Review (MBR) is the apex of the IBP cycle — the senior leadership meeting where cross-functional plans converge, gaps are confronted, and decisions are made 🎯. It goes by several names (Executive S&OP, Integrated Reconciliation, Leadership Business Review), but the purpose is always the same: align on one set of numbers and approve the forward operating plan.

Management Business Review:
The executive-level meeting in the IBP cycle where senior leaders review consolidated demand, supply, and financial plans, make decisions on gaps and risks, and authorize the operating plan for the planning horizon.

If the demand review asks "what will customers want?" and the supply review asks "can we deliver it?" — the MBR asks "given the gaps between those answers, what are we going to do about it?"

# Pre-requisites

The MBR should never be the first time leadership sees the data. Before this meeting takes place, three upstream reviews must be complete:

Demand review — Consensus demand plan agreed, assumptions documented, risks identified.
Supply review — Capacity assessment complete, constraints flagged, supply plan aligned to demand.
Financial reconciliation — Demand and supply plans translated into financial terms, gaps to budget/target quantified via gap analysis.

When these reviews are incomplete or skipped, the MBR degrades into a data review rather than a decision forum. Leaders end up debating the numbers instead of deciding what to do about them.

# Recommended Meeting Structure

A well-run MBR typically runs 90–120 minutes. The agenda below reflects a proven structure — adjust the time allocations to fit your business, but protect the balance between review and decision-making.

Agenda Item	Duration	Purpose
1. Prior decision follow-up	10 min	Review actions from last cycle — were decisions executed? What is still open?
2. Business performance scorecard	10 min	Actual vs. plan for key KPIs: revenue, margin, forecast accuracy, service level, inventory
3. Demand outlook	15 min	Headline demand plan changes, key assumptions, risks and opportunities by segment
4. Supply outlook	10 min	Capacity status, constraint summary, supply risks, and supplier issues
5. Financial reconciliation and gap analysis	20 min	Revenue and margin gaps to plan/budget, scenario outcomes, trade-off options
6. Decisions and actions	30 min	The core of the meeting — resolve open issues, approve plans, assign actions with owners and deadlines
7. Strategic horizon	15 min	Longer-term topics: planning horizon beyond the current cycle, market trends, portfolio direction

The single most important design principle: more than half the meeting should be forward-looking. Items 1 and 2 look backward. Items 3–7 look forward. If your MBR spends most of its time reviewing what already happened, it is not functioning as a decision forum.

# Attendees and Roles

The MBR requires the right people with the right authority. Sending delegates defeats the purpose — decisions made without decision-makers do not stick.

Role	Why They Must Attend
GM / CEO / Business Unit Leader	Owns the integrated plan; arbitrates cross-functional trade-offs; provides strategic direction
VP Sales / Commercial	Represents the demand side; owns revenue assumptions; commits to commercial actions
VP Operations / Supply Chain	Represents the supply side; owns capacity and delivery commitments
VP Finance / CFO	Validates financial impact; translates operational plans into P&L and cash flow
VP Product / Marketing	Owns portfolio assumptions; provides market context; flags competitive dynamics
IBP Process Lead	Facilitates the meeting; ensures process discipline; tracks decisions and actions

The IBP process lead is not a decision-maker — they are the process owner. Their job is to keep the meeting on track, ensure pre-reads were distributed, and capture decisions with clear owners and timelines.

# Decision Types

The MBR produces three categories of output:

Approve the plan — The integrated plan is accepted as the single operating plan for the organization. All functions commit to executing it.
Direct gap closure — Leadership identifies specific actions to close gaps between the plan and targets (e.g., accelerate a promotion, authorize overtime, adjust pricing). These are assigned with owners and deadlines. See governance and decision rights for how authority flows.
Escalate strategic issues — Some gaps cannot be closed within the current operating envelope. These are escalated to strategic discussions: capacity investment, market exit, portfolio restructuring, M&A considerations.

# What Makes It Work vs. What Breaks It

Decisions happen. The meeting produces clear, documented decisions with owners and deadlines — not just discussion.

Pre-work is done. Upstream reviews are complete. Leaders arrive having read the pre-read materials. The meeting does not re-do the demand or supply review.

One set of numbers. Everyone is working from the same integrated data set. There are no shadow forecasts or side plans.

Senior leaders attend personally. The GM, VP Sales, VP Ops, VP Finance — the people who can actually commit resources and make trade-offs — are in the room.

Forward-looking bias. The majority of the meeting focuses on what is coming, not what already happened. Historical performance is covered in the scorecard, then the team moves on.

Scenarios are prepared. When there are gaps or risks, the team comes with options — not just problems. Scenario planning done in upstream reviews feeds directly into MBR decision-making.

The data review trap. The meeting becomes a three-hour walkthrough of charts and reports. Leaders ask "what happened?" instead of "what are we going to do?" This is the single most common MBR failure mode.

Delegates without authority. Senior leaders send their direct reports. The delegates cannot commit resources or make trade-offs, so decisions are deferred "until I can check with my boss." Nothing gets decided.

Decisions revisited outside the process. The MBR approves a plan on Tuesday. On Thursday, the CEO changes the revenue target in a hallway conversation. The one-number plan is now meaningless, and the organization learns that the MBR is theater.

No consequences for non-attendance. When the MBR is optional, it becomes optional. The meeting must be sacred on leadership calendars — cancellation or delegation should require explicit escalation.

Upstream reviews incomplete. Without completed demand, supply, and financial reviews, the MBR has no foundation. Leaders end up doing the analytical work that should have been done in prior reviews.

Too much detail. The MBR should operate at the business level — product families, market segments, major customers — not at the SKU level. Granular issues should be resolved in upstream reviews and only escalated to the MBR when they require executive authority.

# Connecting the MBR to Organizational Cadence

The MBR is one meeting in a monthly cycle. Its effectiveness depends entirely on the quality of the reviews that precede it and the governance that enforces its decisions afterward.

A typical monthly cadence looks like this:

Week 1: Data preparation, statistical baseline generation
Week 2: Demand review
Week 3: Supply review, financial reconciliation
Week 4: Management Business Review

Between MBR meetings, the IBP process lead tracks decision execution and flags any items that are off-track for the next cycle. Decisions made in the MBR should not be revisited mid-cycle unless a material change in business conditions warrants it.

The MBR is not a meeting — it is the culmination of a process. When the process upstream is healthy, the MBR becomes what it is supposed to be: a strategic decision forum that aligns the organization around one plan and moves the business forward.