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IBF's world-leading consulting improves People, Process, Analytics, and Technology to take your S&OP and demand planning to maturity. Our world-renowned consultants include former VPs of Demand Planning and VPs of Supply Chain at multi-billion dollar companies who will help you instill industry-leading best practices. If you want business planning to drive improvements in cash flow, forecast accuracy, customer service, inventory turns and EBITDA, your journey to transformation starts with IBF.
IBF consulting services are designed to identify and improve a company’s maturity level in demand planning, forecasting and S&OP. We identify gaps in your process, and recommend a path forward to reach a higher level of company performance.
Companies that perform at a higher level of demand planning maturity benefit from:
- More accurate forecasts
- Lower inventory turns
- Increased sales
- Greater cash-flow and EBITDA
- Greater shareholder value
- Achieving strategic goals
- High functioning teams that collaborate effectively, both internally and externally
We evaluate companies based on four interdependent dimensions: People, Process, Analytics & Data, and Technology.
Once complete, IBF presents a score for each dimension to the client. The scores are placed on a maturity curve and measured against IBF’s proprietary maturity model, which reveals to the client how they compare to best practices as well as best-in-class companies. Based on this score, the client is then categorized as:
- Emerging
- Essential
- Next Level
- Vanguard or Best-in-Class
Along with scoring, IBF provides actionable recommendations to the client towards reaching the next level of maturity, and eventually, best-in-class levels. And through IBF's Consulting, we can provide the ongoing support you're looking for.
Try Our Free-To-Use S&OP Maturity Model
Identify your current level of S&OP maturity and get specific recommendations across People, Process, Analytics and Technology to take you to the next stage in your S&OP evolution. It’s free and easy to use. Try it now.With IBF’s 4 decades of experience in business planning support, and its extensive knowledge base, IBF is in a unique position to add value to companies and drive transformational change. IBF is trusted to provide an unbiased, independent view of companies' planning and analytics capabilities. And although IBF provides services to support companies in their technology/software selection with its knowledge of the many planning systems available, we are not affiliated with any one software vendor, unlike many consultancy firms.
Demand planning is the process of balancing supply and demand, and relies both on cross-functional collaboration (S&OP) and forecasting to ensure products are delivered on time and in full to the customer. Thanks to effective forecasting and collaboration, an effective demand planning process maximizes sales and reduces operational costs, and improves key KPIs like cash flow, customer service, EBITDA and more. We help companies by making custom-made recommendations for improvements, and/or implementing demand planning processes from scratch. We also help existing planning organizations progress to higher levels of maturity, and eventually, Best In Class.
Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) is a collaborative process that connects Finance, Marketing, Sales, Production, Supply Chain, and Customer Service to provide qualitative and quantitative inputs for forecasting and planning. An effective S&OP process shares valuable information about customers, promotions and supply constraints to build optimal demand plans. We help clients build sustainable S&OP processes from the ground up and support the revitalization of ones that have lost focus. This can then lead to Integrated Business Planning (IBP) that combines sales, operational and financial plans to drive company strategy based on a complete picture of demand, resources, constraints and capabilities.
Forecasting underpins the demand planning process and provides the numbers that Production and Supply Chain rely on, and serves any function that requires any kind of prediction. IBF helps organizations recruit and retain the right people, develop their skills, as well as improve processes, while supporting the technology selection to automate forecasting. We’ll help you leverage advanced analytics including machine learning and predictive analytics to reveal what the business could expect in the future, utilizing both time series modeling and sophisticated cause-and effect modeling. Wherever you are in your forecasting evolution, we can help you leverage your data as a powerful growth tool.
Increasingly, demand planning is recognized as the home of centralized analytics and Business Intelligence. The skills of forecast analysts are being leveraged to provide insight to all areas of the business to capitalize on commercial opportunities and drive operational efficiencies. IBF helps companies establish centralized analytics functions that use advanced predictive analytics and Big Data to uncover hidden opportunities and insight. Marketing promotions are just one beneficiary of this capability who can use this insight to develop highly targeted promotions. A core analytics function not only empowers other functions, but allows a company to react proactively to demand changes which is a gamechanger for supply chain management.