In today’s ever changing market landscape, effective supply chain planning and forecasting plays a critical role in ensuring operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and overall business success. This month we spoke to functional consultant Eric Adu to understand more about the SAP supply chain planning area and get his insights on SAP tools like Advanced Planning and Optimisation (APO) and Integrated Business Planning (IBP).
“SAP offers powerful tools like Advanced Planning and Optimisation (APO) and Integrated Business Planning (IBP) to help optimise supply chain planning processes. APO focuses on key areas like demand, supply network, production and transportation planning, and is typically an on-premise deployment. IBP is SAP’s more recent, cloud-based solution, integrating areas like demand, inventory, supply and financial planning into one unified platform that offers more real-time data and insights.
“Both APO and IBP contribute to enhanced planning accuracy, visibility, collaboration, and agility, which are all essential elements for supply chain success.
“SAP has been gradually transitioning customers from APO to IBP, emphasising IBP as the preferred solution for next-generation supply chain planning, however, the migration may still be some years out for many businesses depending on their individual needs.
“I have been working in the SAP supply chain planning field for around 30 years. I began in the food and beverage industry as a production planner and then as a demand planner, and was part of the team that implemented APO and rolled it out across the company’s global operations. I have since been working in both in-house roles and consultancies across a range of industries, collaborating with teams to improve and rationalise their systems, and implementing new systems.
“Being a part of the supply chain planning and forecasting world is both challenging and incredibly fulfilling, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with lots of brilliant and talented people. There’s never a boring day, anything could happen that can’t be planned for in advance: a volcano could erupt, an earthquake could strike or a cargo ship could get stuck in a canal! Being agile, and having the appropriate systems in place to deal with these changes, is very important. With so many variables and multiple ways to see the same problem, there’s always an opportunity to learn new skills, discover a better solution and find innovative ways to optimise processes and make customers smile.
“We already have a great level of expertise in The Config Team that allows us to offer consulting and support services for customers using APO or IBP as well as implementations. We are in the process of upskilling even more consultants, focusing especially on IBP, so I can’t wait to see what the next few months and years will look like as we continue to grow this area of the business. I’m also looking forward to working with our customers to optimise their supply chain planning systems as they increasingly look to next generation SAP technology like S/4HANA to bring their processes up to date”
For more information on our SAP APO or IBP consulting or support services, or any of our other SAP consultancy or support services, get in touch with our SAP supply chain experts today.