# Frequently Asked Questions

The 10 questions that come up most often when organizations are starting — or restarting — their IBP journey.

# 1. What is the difference between S&OP and IBP?

S&OP (Sales & Operations Planning) is the traditional term for the cross-functional planning process that balances demand and supply. IBP (Integrated Business Planning) extends S&OP by adding explicit financial integration and strategic alignment — the operating plan is expressed in both units and dollars, and it connects to the annual operating plan and longer-term strategy.

In practice, many organizations use the terms interchangeably. This site uses "IBP" to emphasize that financial reconciliation and executive decision-making are not optional add-ons — they're core to the process. If your S&OP process includes financial planning and an executive review, you're doing IBP regardless of what you call it.

# 2. How long does it take to implement IBP?

A basic process — monthly meetings with demand, supply, and executive reviews — can be running within 3-6 months. But "running" and "mature" are different things. True cross-functional integration, trusted data, and disciplined decision-making typically take 2-3 years to develop.

The key is to start simple and iterate. Don't wait for perfection — launch with what you have and improve each cycle. See the Maturity Model for what each stage of development looks like.

# 3. Do I need special software for IBP?

No. Start with spreadsheets and your existing ERP data. Many successful IBP implementations run their first 6-12 months on Excel.

Technology should follow process maturity, not lead it. Buying software before defining your process is the most common and expensive IBP mistake — see the Technology Before Process anti-pattern. When you do outgrow spreadsheets, the Spreadsheet Trap anti-pattern describes how to graduate gracefully.

# 4. Which function should own IBP?

The GM, BU Leader, or CEO should sponsor IBP. Day-to-day facilitation often sits with supply chain or a dedicated IBP process owner, but the executive sponsor must be above the functional level — otherwise no single function can compel cross-functional participation.

When IBP is perceived as "a supply chain thing," it's a sign of the Missing Executive Sponsorship anti-pattern. See Governance & Decision Rights for how to structure ownership and accountability.

# 5. How often should IBP meetings occur?

Monthly. The standard IBP cadence runs a sequence of meetings within each month:

Week	Meeting
Week 1	Data refresh and statistical forecast
Week 2	Demand Review
Week 3	Supply Review
Week 4	Executive IBP / MBR

Some organizations supplement this with weekly short-term execution reviews, but the monthly strategic cycle is the backbone. See Planning Horizons for how the IBP calendar works.

# 6. What data do I need to start IBP?

At minimum: 12-24 months of historical demand, a product hierarchy, a customer hierarchy, and basic capacity data. That's enough to generate a statistical forecast, run a meaningful demand review, and do rough supply-demand balancing.

You don't need perfect data to start. See Data Foundations for the full three-tier breakdown of what data you need at each stage of maturity, and Master Data for Planning for how to structure reference data.

# 7. How do I get executives to attend IBP meetings?

Frame the meeting around decisions they care about — not data reviews they could read in a report. The executive IBP meeting should present gaps between the operating plan and business targets, with scenarios and trade-off options for the executive team to decide on.

If the executive meeting feels like a status update, attendance will decline. If it's the place where resource allocation, investment, and strategic trade-offs get resolved, executives will protect it on their calendar.

See Management Business Review for how to structure the meeting and the Executive IBP Agenda template for a ready-to-use format.

# 8. What KPIs should I track for IBP?

Start with four:

Metric	What It Measures
Forecast accuracy (MAPE)	How well we predicted demand
Customer OTIF	How reliably we delivered to customers
Inventory turns	How efficiently we're using working capital
Revenue / margin vs. plan	How well the operating plan translates to financial results

As the process matures, add bias tracking, schedule adherence, capacity utilization, and plan stability. See KPIs & Metrics for the full IBP scorecard framework.

# 9. How does IBP relate to the annual budget?

IBP provides a rolling, monthly-updated operating plan that should be more current than the annual budget. Early on, most organizations run IBP alongside the budget as a parallel view. Over time, the IBP plan should become the primary operating plan, with the annual budget serving as a baseline for variance analysis.

The financial reconciliation step in each IBP cycle explicitly bridges the gap between the latest operating plan and the annual target, surfacing gaps early enough to act on them. See also Gap Analysis for how to identify and close revenue, margin, and volume gaps.

# 10. Our company tried S&OP before and it failed. What should we do differently?

First, diagnose what went wrong. The Anti-Patterns section covers the four most common failure modes:

Technology Before Process — Did you buy a tool before defining the process?
Missing Executive Sponsorship — Did executive attendance fade after the first few months?
The Spreadsheet Trap — Did manual processes prevent scaling?
Siloed Planning — Did functions continue to plan independently despite the meeting?

If you recognize your organization in more than two of these, you likely need a fundamental reset — not incremental improvements to the same approach. Start with Governance & Decision Rights to design the process foundation, secure an executive sponsor, and run 3-6 manual cycles before adding complexity.