Improved Visibility with SAP IBP

The Customer

Our customer is a  pharmaceutical company with a global presence. The organization is dedicated to research, development, manufacturing, and marketing pharmaceuticals.

The Challenge

As our client expanded its portfolio by acquiring pharmaceutical companies worldwide, their rapid growth necessitated efficient management and integration of supply chain planning processes. However, a fragmented IT landscape, particularly due to multiple ERP and Business Intelligence systems, made it difficult to obtain an end-to-end view of supply chain planning. Employees relied on Excel files due to the lack of an integrated system, and the vast amount of data generated further complicated matters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, frequent plan revisions were necessary to manage demand uncertainty and stock positioning.

The Solution & The Benefits

We began by analysing the planning processes and executing the project with a hybrid agile approach to establish a formal consensus demand process. This process created a supply plan while effectively propagating demand across the supply network. Through workshops, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the planning processes to gain a deeper understanding, which informed our detailed documentation of the key elements.

We designed the entire supply planning process within SAP IBP, integrating it with all ERP systems. As our client required, we differentiated corporate processes from local ones while maintaining a single source of truth for all planning-related information.

This integration and standardization significantly improved end-to-end visibility across the supply chain. By consolidating data from different systems into a unified platform, stakeholders gained real-time insights into demand, supply, and inventory levels at every stage of the process. This not only facilitated more informed decision-making but also ensured that any discrepancies or issues could be identified and addressed promptly. Additionally, significant enhancements were made in reporting capabilities, including automatic MAPE and BIAS calculations, stock projections across all supply nodes, and considerable savings in manual efforts previously required for data collection and consolidation. This also led to substantial advancements in demand simulation activities.